


death's dance

by starcall (frostbloom)



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - League of Legends Champions, Cloud 9 (League of Legends RPF), Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostbloom/pseuds/starcall
Summary: In a world where Black Mist transforms dying humans into undead ghouls and Void creatures prey upon anyone they can find, powerful champions are assigned to different roles in order to keep everything balanced. Shadow Walkers are a champion class tasked with maintaining order, reaping the souls of those who are destined to die and protecting those who can live a little longer.One particularly foggy night, Sneaky and Smoothie find a human unlike any they have come across before.(discontinued)





	1. twilight assault

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sneaky and Smoothie make a special discovery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Twilight Assault (Q): Shen recalls his spirit blade to attack with it, dealing damage based on the target's max health. The attacks are greatly empowered if it collides with an enemy champion, and all collided enemies are slowed while running away from Shen.

_He’s going to die._

_He’s so tired. He’s so, so tired, and for the first time in a very long time, he is completely alone. His only companion for so long is now gone, snatched away by an assailant who has already vanished into the night, only leaving the ghostly imprint of a spike buried in his chest._

_How is he even alive still, with a sharp object stuck this deep into his body? It doesn’t matter. Soon he’ll be dead anyways._

_Somewhere in the distance he hears laughter, so faint that he has to strain to hear it. It’s warm and genuine, definitely not the chilling laugh of someone out for blood. “Maybe I’m hallucinating,” he mutters, voice hoarse, but he can’t keep the hope from flaring up within him._

_Just the act of raising his head leaves him feeling dizzy, so he sinks back onto the ground, whimpering involuntarily as mud starts to seep up. His head hurts. His chest hurts. Everything hurts._

_He becomes aware of something floating above him, a wispy blue-green creature. It hangs unmoving in the air. Maybe it’s here to finish him off or to confirm his death to whoever had attacked in the first place._

_As consciousness begins to slip away from him, his vision going dark, he sees an eerie greenish light bobbing up and down in the distance, almost mesmerizing. Spooky, yet beautiful. And he hears footsteps. The light is coming closer and closer, but he’s fading fast…_

* * *

It is a dark, foggy day, and Zachary Scuderi has a job to do.

He is out on patrol duty again tonight, with about an hour left on his shift. On a night this shadowy he’d have wanted to send Svenskeren to do the rounds—possibly alone, more likely accompanied by Jensen—but Dennis had just dealt with a particularly stubborn soul yesterday and it wouldn’t be fair to do that to him.

Sneaky summons a Sentinel, watching as it floats up from the ground before him; he lets it glide ahead of him into the gloom, places a hand upon the spear on his belt, and waits intently for any signs of life. After a few seconds of no result he moves to follow it, taking quick strides, paying no heed to the looming darkness all about.

“Sneaky!” a voice shouts from behind him. “Wait up!”

It’s Andy Ta, otherwise known as Smoothie, his Oathsworn and patrol partner. They and a few others are a team of Shadow Walkers. Dennis is a Shadow Reaper who absorbs the essences of souls with his scythe, able to either brawl or assassinate depending on the situation. Nicolaj is a Master of Shadows, swiftly taking down targeted souls with razor-sharp shurikens before vanishing back into darkness. Zach is a Spear of Vengeance, chasing down anyone that tries to run with spear after ghostly spear, ripping through flesh and soul alike. Andy is a Chain Warden, there to safely transport souls via his lantern to their final resting place in the Shadow Isles and to restrain with his chains any who try especially hard to escape.

Shadow Walkers are in charge of claiming the souls of dying humans before Black Mist, creeping across the land at night, can transform them into ghastly specters, mere shadows of their former selves. Only recently has the Black Mist become endless and dangerously thick; it usually does not harm any of its Walkers, but has been increasingly lethal to humans, leaving very little time for search and and even less room for error. New, grotesque life forms known as Void monsters have emerged from the thickest swathes of darkness. They are dangerous beasts that seem to be hunting Shadow Walkers and humans alike, chasing any trace of spiritual energy that they can detect. In addition to keeping human souls safe from the Black Mist, Sneaky and the rest of his team have also been fighting these monsters when they try to prey upon weak or isolated humans.

“Walk faster, bro,” Zach calls out, twisting to look behind him. He can barely make out the greenish glow of Andy’s lantern in the swirling Black Mist.

“Help me out, Sneaky, come on,” comes the reply. “You want to try carrying this lantern everywhere? It’s been hours, and this shit is heavy!”

“I don’t know,” Zach replies, grinning. Quickly, he checks to see if the Sentinel has found anyone. It hasn’t. “I don’t know why you’re telling me about this, dude, I can’t help you with that.”

“Just use Fate’s Call? Please?” The light of Smoothie’s lantern bobs up and down behind Sneaky.

“Hmm,” he says, pretending to be deep in thought. “Just get some more exercise, Mr. Smoothie, you probably need it.”

“What effort—hey, Zach, I work out way more than you do, you _prick,”_ Andy shouts, but he’s laughing hard, and Zach is too. This feels nice, having some lighthearted fun on a particularly Misty night. They have not found any humans tonight, nor reaped any souls; Smoothie’s lantern does not yet wail with the voices of trapped souls, although it shines as brightly as ever. On a night where even moonlight is dimmed by this roiling, malevolent mist, the lantern’s light, although watery from afar, does penetrate the haze. Surely their approach can be easily seen.

He activates Fate’s Call, standing still and concentrating for a couple of seconds, and Andy appears right next to him, lantern shining brightly as always. “Thanks,” he says, raising his lantern and twisting to look behind them. “Pretty bad night, huh? Lots of Mist.”

Sneaky is about to reply when he realizes with a sudden rush of horror that the Sentinel is no longer moving. It has stopped in an alley somewhere ahead of them, revealing something on the ground—a human. A corpse?

“Smoothie,” he utters, nervous. “Someone’s there.”

They run forward without another word. It’s floated farther away from them than he thought possible, so it takes them a bit to get there. While they move Zach focuses on the Sentinel, locking into its perspective, and it gives him some basic information about the soul. _Male, 20 years old. No name._ No name? That is concerning. That can mean one of two things, each resulting in a drastically different outcome.

 _Alive._ He’s barely alive. The Sentinel can just detect the human’s heartbeat, although it’s weakening fast.

They reach the human and kneel at his side. He is covered in grime that obscures the color of his obviously curly hair; one of his hands moves feebly over the phantom outline of a spiked blade someone has sunk into his chest. Sneaky looks again through the Sentinel’s eyes and all he gets from the soul is _pain_. (That makes him a little uncomfortable, so he quickly stops looking.)

“Why is the blade immaterial?” he mutters under his breath. It looks as though it’s been blocked and then burned away by an Energy shield, leaving only a wound and a thin outline of a knife, but no actual weapon. They haven’t seen something like this since last year, back when Impact was still with them.

“What’s his name?” Smoothie ventures, as Sneaky recalls the Sentinel, causing it to burrow back into the ground.

“Uh,” Sneaky says, rather intelligently. He had forgotten that only he can see what the Sentinel does, unlike how Smoothie can summon his lantern to light up any location. “Yeah, about that… the Sentinel couldn’t find one. His name is obscured to me, my Sentinel can't read it. It couldn't see his fate either.”

Smoothie sucks in a sharp breath.

“So either he’s a human who’s already been marked as dead somehow, or he’s a potential Shadow Walker,” Sneaky continues. “Like, an extremely powerful recruit or something.”

They look down at the human, who lies face-up, eyes closed, body completely motionless. “He doesn’t have much time left,” Smoothie warns. “If he was fully human, I think he’d already be dead. I mean, he’s got a freaking spiked blade in his chest, that wound should be even worse! But the blade’s been blocked and dissolved. There’s got to be some sort of special power in him somewhere if his body can do that to any sort of magical weapon. He could be like Impact, you know?”

Sneaky closes his eyes. When Juan, a Shadow Reaper, and Eonyoung, an Eye of Twilight, had left them months ago, they had scrambled to find replacements for both and had only found one. Eonyoung in particular had been the protector on their team, the one who had easily blocked attack after attack with his Energy shields to keep them all safe. If this human is truly as powerful as he seems to be, he could be the fifth team member they’ve been looking for. “And if we’re wrong and he’s supposed to die here?”

“Then Jensen brings him outside and makes it quick and painless.” Smoothie’s speech is rapid, his decision-making confident as always. Cool under pressure. “But I’d rather not be wrong. Let’s get him home.”

They work as quickly as they can. Andy summons a chain, which Zach begins to carefully wrap around the human’s waist; at the same time, Andy holds his lantern just over the wound and squeezes his eyes shut. The lantern grows brighter and brighter by the second.

“What are you doing?” Sneaky asks, perplexed. He can feel the Oathsworn bond dwindling as Smoothie’s life force weakens for a brief moment, and grabs the other Shadow Walker’s arm in sudden panic. “Smoothie! Are you feeding _your own soul_ to the lantern?”

Smoothie doesn’t immediately respond, still focused on his lantern, which is getting even brighter. Suddenly Sneaky feels the Oathsworn bond completely dissipate, two seconds before Smoothie slumps forward. Thankfully Sneaky is ready to catch him.

“ _Andy!_ What the fuck?” He shakes his Oathsworn frantically and is relieved when the bond quickly returns, along with Smoothie’s consciousness. “Andy?”

“Sorry,” Andy groans, struggling to return to a kneeling position. He sounds breathless. “Got a bit carried away. Put a little too much of my soul in there.”

“Why though?” questions Zach. “What are you trying to do?”

“My lantern can temporarily shield against damage or alleviate minor wounds—this is a recent development,” Smoothie hastily injects when he sees Sneaky raise an eyebrow, already knowing what incident is at the forefront of his mind. “It absorbed the spike, that’s inside the lantern now. I can summon it again later and we can examine it more closely. And healing power increases a little bit with the intensity of the lantern’s light. So without feeding the lantern doesn’t do much, especially not with a wound this serious.”

Sure enough, when Sneaky briefly resummons the Sentinel to check on the human’s condition, he not only finds a stronger heartbeat and less pain, but visible spirit energy emanating from deep within the human soul he is examining. Perplexed, he recalls the Sentinel and stands up.

“His innate energy is actually crazy strong now, definitely not a human trait—” Zach starts, then pauses when he feels his Oathsworn bond waver again. He looks over to see that his companion is hunched over, eyes squeezed shut, taking deep breaths. “Uh… Andy, can you even walk back?”

Smoothie manages a nod, but it’s not very convincing. He looks dazed. To Sneaky, it immediately becomes clear that his companion is on the verge of collapse and will not make the full journey home. “So you can’t. That’s okay,” he mutters, pulling the human’s body a bit closer and then wrapping the excess length of chain around Smoothie himself. His patrol partner’s movements are sluggish, as though they are being made in deep water. “That’s, uh. Yeah. Let me just run back a bit, and then I’ll Fate’s Call you back with me, and he’ll get dragged along too. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” Andy replies, voice barely a whisper. The bond flickers—still off only briefly, but it takes a little bit longer to come back this time.

Sneaky turns back toward home base and hurries through the fog. If he takes too long and Smoothie gets any weaker than he already is, the Black Mist can start to affect weakened Shadow Walkers, and that would be catastrophic. Not to mention the human’s condition. When Sneaky left he was stable, but who knows how long that will last?

He sprints for a while, about two-thirds of the way to the team house, until he has to stop and catch his breath. When he looks back he can just see the faintest glow through the columns of dark Mist that swirl around him. Has Smoothie’s lantern ever gotten bright enough to see from this far away?

The Oathsworn bond tugs feebly at his chest, urging Zach to return to his partner. Carefully, he crouches down and begins to channel Fate’s Call for the second time that night. This time it’s more difficult. Not only is the distance between him and his Oathsworn much greater and their bond temporarily weaker, but now there’s a second being to take along for the ride. It takes quite a few minutes, a lot of concentration, and a ton of Sneaky’s own power, but Smoothie does eventually appear on the ground in front of him, the human lying next to him still wrapped up in chains. His lantern is blindingly bright.

“Andy?” ventures Zach cautiously, but receives only a weak groan in response. He’s about to reach down and shake his companion when there’s a faint, high-pitched screeching noise, somewhere ahead of them, distant. Zach shoots to his feet, suddenly terrified. He knows what that noise means. “Oh no,” he mumbles. “No way…”

He hears that same noise again, but closer this time. It’s coming from the direction of the team house. Whatever the creature is, it can definitely intercept them before they can even get close to their home. If they’re lucky, it’s just a Lesser Wraith and he can just spear it a few times for it to drop dead. If they’re not lucky…

Working quickly, Sneaky summons the Sentinel once again and directs it through the fog as quickly as he can. He takes over its perspective and imagines drifting towards their house, knocking urgently against a window until it is opened—

The screech sounds again, even closer. It sounds like it’s about to erupt from the fog right in front of them. There’s no more time to control the Sentinel’s path; all he can hope for now is that it does what he had willed it to do. He drops its vision and crouches, placing a shaking hand on his spear.

Sneaky has more offensive capabilities than Smoothie does, just by his classification as Spear of Vengeance, so at least he can defend himself. But it’s going to be hard to defend an unconscious human and an almost completely incapacitated Shadow Walker.

The ground before Zach shifts; a hole yawns open and the creature’s scream blasts his ears. This is no Lesser Wraith. It’s a monster from the Void, presumably attracted by their vulnerability, the lantern's brightness, and the high concentration of spiritual energy they must be giving off.

Andy is his Oathsworn partner; he has saved their team with smart shotcalling and calm calculations many times. The defenseless human who lies on the ground nearby is a possible Shadow Walker, perhaps an untapped Eye of Twilight; he could be their team’s crucial fifth member. Zach needs to keep them both alive.

Muscles tense, spear raised, he braces himself; only seconds later, the creature is upon him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey, hope you enjoyed! if you're confused by this AU, just comment and I'll answer it ASAP. no guarantees on how quickly I can update.  
> this is a gen fic, so there probably won't be any pairings between players. I hope it was obvious which players correspond to which champions! I tried to choose champions with a dark or shadow-related theme.
> 
> thanks for reading!
> 
> -sab


	2. rend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our boys fight monsters, heal up, and wait for things to happen.  
> Someone very special is about to wake up...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rend (E): Attacks impale their targets with spears. Activate to rip the spears out, slowing and dealing escalating damage.

“It’s really bad out there tonight,” muses Dennis as he takes a bite of his sandwich. When he looks out the window all he can see is thick, roiling darkness. “I’m surprised Sneaky didn’t send you and me out there.”

“Not after the patrol night you just had,” comes Jensen’s voice from where he sits on the couch. “It’s not every day that a dying human tries to stick you with a knife. Good thing your brain was on, Reapered would say.” His blue hoodie seems to be swallowing him up. Dennis squints.

“Wait a minute, is that mine?” he asks through another bite of food.

“No, it’s Sneaky’s.” Jensen responds without moving. “Or it was from his room, anyways. Maybe he took it from you. Whatever. I’m freezing.”

Sven regards him with one eyebrow raised, then continues. “Anyways, I know he doesn’t really talk about it.” He chews contemplatively for a moment. “But I know he’s uneasy about not being able to just fade into the shadows like we can.”

“He and Andy can just save each other, between Andy’s lantern and his Fate’s Call,” mumbles Jensen. “And they’re both insane at what they do. I’m sure they’ll be fine. I wonder when they’ll be back?”

A knocking noise—Dennis shoots up from his chair. It doesn’t seem to be coming from the door. When he looks back at Jensen, the other man is half-standing, looking apprehensive. “Can you check the door?”

Dennis does, picking up his scythe from a nearby table, but just as he expects, there’s nothing there. He turns back to Jensen and is about to ask what he thinks when he realizes that Jensen isn’t even by the couch anymore—instead, he’s peering out the window, one hand frozen on the latch. “Fuck,” he mutters, voice faint. When Dennis walks closer, perplexed, Jensen lets go and turns away from the window. His face is pale. “Something’s gone wrong.”

“What?” Sven just blinks at him in confusion. “What do you mean?”

 _“Idiot,”_ says Sven’s scythe. He cuffs it over the handle as subtly as possible to shut it up.

Jensen just sighs. “Open the window. Let it in.”

Slowly, Dennis reaches forward and unlatches the window. A few wisps of Black Mist drift in and immediately are whisked away into a vent on the floor below; following behind them is something that floats in the air, glowing a familiar bright blue-green. It looks kind of like a flowy handkerchief wearing a mask. “Is that… Sneaky’s Sentinel?”

“Sneaky’s Sentinel,” Jensen confirms, pulling the window closed and taking the Sentinel in one hand. “That’s his most urgent signal for help. When he sends his Sentinel and nothing else, it means he’s fighting his way out of the situation.” He stuffs the Sentinel into the pocket of the hoodie and pulls his gauntlets out from under the couch.

“How often does this happen?” asks Dennis, opening the medicine cabinet to look for a health potion. He has to stick his hand in down to the bottom of the bin to grab the last one. They really need to restock soon.

Jensen pauses halfway into strapping on his his second gauntlet to look Dennis directly in the eye. “It hasn’t happened in at least a year,” he answers.

“...Well, shit.”

They set out not even a minute later. Jensen pulls the Sentinel back out of his pocket as they walk briskly forward into the fog. “Show me,” he orders, and the Sentinel’s eyes glow red. Jensen holds it out to Sven. “Just keep one hand on it. I’ll just teleport you to their location with me, it’s faster than having you walk through shadows to get there.”

Dennis obeys without hesitation. Twenty or so seconds of concentration from Jensen, and then they vanish together into the shadows.

* * *

Sneaky is ready for the monster before its outstretched claws even reach him, hopping back nimbly and hurling a spear into the creature’s exposed underbelly. The ghostly weapon remains lodged in the beast even as it lets out a terrifying roar and leaps for Sneaky again. He wills another spear into existence with little effort and throws it next to the first, jumping backwards again; the tips of the monster’s claws almost graze his torso, only missing by inches.

He knows what denizen of the Void this is. This is Rek’Sai, the Void Burrower, a creature with huge jagged teeth and even bigger claws. Currently it’s staring Sneaky down as though waiting for him to make a move.

Smoothie and the human have to be protected at all costs. If he tries to lead Rek’Sai too far away, the monster might just direct its attention to the defenseless pair on the ground and he’ll be powerless to stop it. If he fights too close to them and happens to lose, it can just turn and immediately devour both of them. Maybe Smoothie can weather a few blows from those gigantic teeth, even if he can’t fight back or protect himself in his weakened state; the human, regardless of his inner power or whatever, stands no such chance.

So Zach jumps forward on his next spear. The great beast lurches to one side, narrowly avoiding the piercing shaft, then rushes him once more, swiping its claws.

He doesn’t dodge so cleanly this time. One of Rek’Sai’s claws slices through the fabric of his hoodie, cutting through the skin below and drawing lines of blood over his right shoulder. Zach lets out an involuntary hiss, but forces himself to keep moving, leaping forward again and turning to face Rek’Sai. It’s no major wound—he can just heal up when they make it back to the house. If they make it back to the house.

The Void monster is fully focused on him now, attention diverted from the vulnerable targets lying nearby. The spears he had managed to land earlier still stick out from Rek’Sai’s body, shining pale blue in the gloom. A low groan emits from the monster’s throat as it leaps forward again; Sneaky hops nimbly to one side and tosses yet another spear. It’s easy for him to make quick movements right after throwing a spear—the force he uses to hurl it propels him in whatever direction he wants to go in. Learning that mechanic took some concentration and a lot of getting used to, but after so many years Sneaky likes to think he’s mastered it.

He continues to dance around his opponent, ignoring the sharp sting of his shoulder wound every time he attacks. Rek’Sai keeps swiping those huge claws at his neck and chest, and every time Zach just throws a spear and hops away with only inches to spare. All he has to do is buy time for someone, _anyone_ from the team house to show up and help.

The creature pauses as another spear hits, then roars and lunges directly for Zach again. Anticipating yet another swipe of claws, he hops to one side, only for Rek’Sai to stop and change direction. Its huge claws catch Zach right in the chest, sending him flying away with a cry of pain. Somewhere along the way he hits the ground back-first, body skidding over rough stone. When he opens his eyes and struggles to push himself up, the world spins; when he gingerly feels the back of his head and neck, his hand comes away streaked with blood.

Dimly he hears their attacker hissing, the noise getting farther and farther away from him. Why isn’t Rek’Sai coming towards him, finishing him off? Why would it just ignore the Energy source it had fought so hard to secure?

He’s slow to think, to move, but when realization finally hits him he almost cries out in horror. _Of course._ Rek’Sai must be burrowing back towards Andy and the human.

He uses every last bit of strength to get up. There’s no time. Frantically, his vision still blurring, Zach tries to channel Fate’s Call, to bring the two of them to him, but the effort makes pain flare up in his head and chest; he falls to his knees again, explosive coughs wracking his body.

None of their team members have come to help them. Perhaps the Sentinel did not even finish traveling its intended path and they don’t know that Sneaky and Smoothie are in trouble. Rek’Sai has not emerged from the earth yet, but when it finally does, the consequences will be catastrophic.

Through a haze of pain and fear Zach pulls himself forward, crawling over damp ground towards the greenish glow of Andy’s lantern. He doesn’t dare stand, not when his head is spinning like this. If he can just get himself close enough somehow, there is one last thing he can do—he can only hope it will be enough.

The moment he gets in range of Andy and sees Rek’Sai beginning to tunnel out of the ground nearby, he focuses on the spears that are embedded in its body, spearheads still protruding from its back. _“Rend,”_ he hisses through gritted teeth, putting as much power as he possibly can into the order.

An agonizing delay—and then the spears obey his command, tearing free from the Void creature’s body as though snapped violently back by an invisible hand. Rek’Sai shudders, emitting an unearthly screech from gaping jaws, and its body spasms. For a split second Zach thinks the thing has fallen unconscious—another moment, though, and Rek’Sai whirls upon Andy’s prone form with a terrifying screech.

Sneaky forces himself to stand, ignoring how the earth seems to tilt on its axis and how his entire body screams in protest. He moves towards them as fast as he can, but he already knows there’s no way he’ll make it in time.

“Smoothie!” he wails as the creature’s huge fangs descend. In mere moments those teeth will shred through the body of his friend, his partner, his Oathsworn… and Sneaky, still stumbling towards him, can only watch in horror, waiting for the Oathsworn bond to flicker out and never return.

It happens so fast it must be a figment of Sneaky’s imagination.

A small shape clad in an overly large blue and white hoodie darts from the shadows right next to Rek’Sai and slices at its face with one gauntlet-covered arm, knocking it backwards. Zach almost cries with relief and collapses where he stands. Jensen is here. He can drive away an injured Void creature with no problem at all.

“Sneaky?” Dennis stands over him, scythe in one hand, glass bottle in the other; he kneels at Sneaky’s side and immediately starts trying to get some potion into him.

Zach allows himself to get only a single mouthful down before he leans back, coughing. God, the pain in his ribs is unbearable. “Smoothie,” he gasps. “Help Smoothie. And the human…”

Sven starts to ask about “the human,” but his voice is getting farther and farther away. Sneaky closes his eyes…

* * *

It takes only one well-aimed shuriken to send Rek’Sai burrowing back into the earth, screeching—Sneaky really did a lot of damage to the vile thing. Jensen runs back to Smoothie, checking his teammate’s pulse with shaking hands. It’s a bit weaker than normal but definitely safe.

There’s another body next to Smoothie, one slicked with mud and with an open wound in its chest. A human, possibly being preyed upon by the Void creature just dispatched. Maybe Sneaky and Smoothie had interrupted Rek’Sai while it was trying to devour the human.

Is it already dead? Jensen checks. The human’s heart is somehow going strong—stronger than Smoothie’s, even. That’s definitely strange. Well, that doesn’t matter now, there isn’t much reason to leave a badly wounded human alive to suffer.

He takes a deep breath. This is part of his job. This is mostly his job, actually. He’s the quickest at ending human lives, so quick that it’s barely felt, and so the duty often falls to him. Also because everyone else is visibly affected when they have to kill humans that aren’t already overwhelmed by the agonizing yet numbing effects of Black Mist, and he’s a lot better at hiding it than they are.

He holds another shuriken between his fingers. Why is his hand shaking so much? “Ah, fuck,” he mutters, and prepares to throw.

“Wait!” comes Dennis’s voice from behind him. “Jensen!” His teammate hurries over and gestures frantically for him to put away the shuriken.

“What is it?” Jensen slowly straightens up, the weapon still held loosely in one hand. “Is Sneaky okay?”

“I don’t—well, sort of. We need to get him back as soon as possible, but he said something about helping the human?”

“The human?” He glances down at the body at his feet. “He said to _help_ the human?”

“Yeah, and then he passed out.” Dennis starts walking away from Jensen with a shrug. “I’m going to get him back to the house right away. I know you can only take one person through the shadows with you, so I’ll call Reapered to come help, I think he was out talking to Rapidstar tonight?”

Reapered is the team’s wise advisor, an older Shadow Walker whose champion class has faded with time. He is a Will of the Blades, in control of a large four-pronged blade that floats along behind him like a misshapen metallic shadow. For a few weeks he’s been talking about adding another advisor to organize team patrol efforts and devise strategies for dealing with the recent influx of Void creatures; he believes Rapidstar, an old teammate from his own time as a Shadow Walker, could be the one to help.

“Yeah, he was,” Jensen calls after his teammate’s retreating back. “But he should be on his way back now,” he mutters to himself.

So this human _is_ something special. He’ll have to ask Sneaky and Smoothie more about them later, or even have Reapered analyze the human’s possible abilities. But for now, he’s going to get Smoothie home. Reapered can stop by on his way back home and carry the human back using his blade as a weird sort of stretcher, he’s done it before.

Dennis and Sneaky are probably already gone, considering that there are no other bodies lying around. With one last look down at the human, Jensen grips Smoothie’s wrist, envisions the doorstep of the team house, and quickly channels his energy towards that location. They vanish into the shadows shortly after.

* * *

 _“So that’s why I think you should come join Cloud9, Minsung-ah,”_ Hangyu exclaims, patting his old friend on the shoulder. He had been worried about his own language capabilities, as he hadn’t needed to speak his native language in a long time, but he remembers well enough.

 _“I’ll think about it,”_ the other man says, absently spinning his wand in one hand. Reapered is about to open his mouth to persuade him further when there is a series of urgent knocks at the door, and Rapidstar rises to answer it.

“Hi,” says Svenskeren. Blinking rapidly, Minsung retreats, shooting Hangyu a look of utter confusion. “I’m Dennis. Sorry for just showing up. Hey, Reapered?”

“Hello Sven, where is your brain?” Reapered pats the Shadow Reaper’s shoulder with a slight smile. Of course one of his boys would show up at his friend’s home out of nowhere. Only them. “On?”

“On, I needed it on so I could get here, didn’t I?” Dennis wrings his hands. “Sorry to interrupt but we need you to go get someone. Sneaky and Smoothie were attacked by Rek’Sai but want us to protect this human, Sneaky was really hurt so I brought him back and called for Matt, that Starchild from Contractz’s new team, you know—“

“Sven!” Hangyu cuts him off with a sigh. “What you want me to hear? Is not very clear.”

 _“Idiot,”_ says Sven’s scythe in an undertone. Reapered wills his blade to knock it out of Sven’s hand, silencing it.

“Ah.” Dennis shrugs. “There’s an injured human in the second alley from the house. We couldn’t bring him back so I’m asking you to get him. I’m going to check on Sneaky.”

“All right!” Hangyu thumps him on the back, waves goodbye at an open-mouthed Minsung, and leads his team member to the door. “I can do that. Go!”

Without another word, Dennis nods, picks up his scythe, and steps into the shadows, where he vanishes within seconds as though melted away by the darkness. Reapered turns and walks forward into the Black Mist, directing his four-pronged blade along before him; behind him, Rapidstar’s front door swings shut. He has disappeared into the night before the sound of the door closing finishes echoing through the neighborhood.

* * *

Smoothie wakes on the couch with a pounding headache and blurry vision. It’s weirdly bright and warm, like he’s lying in a ray of sunshine. “What the fuck just happened,” he says out loud because _he has no idea what just happened._ “Guys?”

“Hold on,” says a vaguely familiar voice, sounding somewhat frazzled. “Just a second, sorry—”

A moment later Smoothie’s vision clears and the pain in his head diminishes. A black-haired man holding a long crescent-tipped staff is peering anxiously down at him. This is the Golden Guardians’ Starchild, Matt Elento.

“Matt?” Andy sits up. “Hey, thanks. How long have I been out?”

“The whole night,” replies Matt with a shrug. “I had to attend to Sneaky first, he broke a rib somehow. Healing him took a lot of my time and energy. We figured you would understand.”

“Hang on. He _broke his rib?_ You serious?” Andy whistles through his teeth. _Just what the hell happened while I was unconscious?_

“Yeah, dead serious.” Matt turns to enter the kitchen. “I’ll tell your team that you’re awake,” he calls over his shoulder.

A couple minutes later Reapered ambles through the living room doorway with a smile on his face. His four-pronged blade is floating behind him at chest level. “So Smoothie, what happen?” he asks, plopping himself down on the couch next to Andy’s feet. “Why you kill yourself on patrol?”

Andy groans. “Look, I was using the shielding power of my lantern to keep the human alive, alright? And I’m not sure why, but as I was basically feeding some of my energy into him through the lantern, he kinda took in more energy than I was giving up.”

“Mmm,” says Reapered, still smiling. “This is okay then. Make sense.”

“So that exposed me to a lot of problems at once, and I’m not sure what happened after that,” Andy continues.

“Sneaky fought Rek’Sai,” says a new voice, and a moment later Jensen leaps over the railing on the staircase and lands unharmed in the center of the rug. (Smoothie subtly rolls his eyes.)

“Oho, Jensen!” Reapered claps his hands.

Jensen takes a little bow, but his eyes remain stone cold. “He gravely injured Rek’Sai when he pulled his spears out but at some point before that, it smashed him into the wall of the alleyway. Thankfully he’s pretty tough.”

“And he’s fine now?”

“As fine as you can be after a fight like that, yes.” Jensen frowns. “He was mostly worried about you, first thing he did when he woke up was ask if you were safely home. Probably because Rek’Sai had its fangs about this far from your body when Dennis and I showed up, by the way.” He holds up his hands about a foot apart.

“Woooooow,” says Reapered a little too enthusiastically as Andy shudders. To think of what would have happened if they had arrived just a little bit later…

“Anyways Reapered. Would you mind telling us more about the human? You did say there was something interesting after you brought him in.” Jensen takes a seat on the other sofa, kicking one of his gauntlets a bit further under the table as he does so.

“Ah, the human? Well… I do not completely understand. But he is like Impact.”

“An Eye of Twilight?” Smoothie raises an eyebrow. “That’s what I figured. Is that why he took life force from me? Because he’s an Energy champion?”

“Yes and no.” Reapered leans forward. “Only a little like Impact. Maybe... half. Also like me.”

Andy squints at him. “You serious? I thought Will of the Blades was dying out as a champ type?”

“Is dying, but… you will see,” replies Reapered with a shrug. “Die doesn’t mean no replacement.”

Jensen looks like he wants to ask another question, but Reapered waves a hand towards the staircase. “Let’s go. See Sneaky. And the human wake up soon.”

“Where’s Sven?” asks Smoothie as they climb.

“In the kitchen buying health potions for the supply,” replies Jensen. “Matt brought some along, and I figured TSM taught Dennis how to do business just fine.”

Sneaky is asleep when they enter his room. There are thick bandages along his right shoulder and neck and about his ribs. Jensen sits down in the lone seat by the bed. From the looks of things, he had been sitting in that same seat for a while before coming downstairs.

“Did you sleep?” Andy mutters as Reapered puts his blade down on Sneaky’s desk.

Jensen snorts. “Do I ever?”

Before Andy can make some sort of witty remark in reply, Sneaky stirs. “Jensen?” he yawns. “You’re still here?”

“Yeah,” says Jensen softly. “Still here. Smoothie and Reapered are too.”

“Oh, hey guys,” Zach mumbles, pulling at his sheets so that they go up to his neck and then grabbing his glasses off the nightstand. “Where’s your lantern, Smoothie?”

“Uh… we can open the blinds, if that’s what you want.”

“No, the blade. You stored the phantom of the spiked blade inside the lantern. Remember?”

“Oh, right.” Smoothie channels his energy, and a couple seconds later his lantern appears in his hands, glowing just as intensely as it had been the night before.

“What the hell, how much of yourself did you feed to that thing?” Jensen hisses, squinting.

“Uh… way too much?” Andy concentrates on the spike—he knows it’s in that lantern somewhere. “Reapered, take a look at this, it was in the human’s chest when we found him.”

The shape of the spike appears in Reapered’s hands. “Oh,” says their advisor with a frown. “Mmm. Void creature. Kha’Zix? Maybe check. Sneaky?”

Zach heaves himself up to a sitting position with some help from Jensen and waves his Sentinel forward. After some time staring into space, he nods slowly and recalls the Sentinel. “Yeah, it’s from the body of a large insect-looking thing, and as far as I know that’s what Kha’Zix looks like.”

“How the hell is a human alive after facing _Kha’Zix?_ That thing logically should have ripped him apart or carried him off to eat later within thirty seconds of seeing him.” Jensen throws up his hands as Smoothie dissolves the ghostly imprint of the Kha'Zix spike and allows his lantern to disappear into thin air. “Even if he’s some Eye of Twilight. A fully developed one like Impact would never dream of taking one on alone!”

“Maybe he did not take on alone? And… he is very powerful,” replies Reapered with a chuckle. “Not just like Impact, but also like me. You will see.”

“So he’s an Eye of Twilight, but… something else as well?” Sneaky lies back down and pulls his covers up to his chin.

“Correct. He wake up soon and then everyone go see him. Few hours.”

“Even me?” croaks Sneaky. Reapered nods.

“Well, if you’ve got everything under control, I’ll go join Dennis in the kitchen then,” says Jensen, his gaze flitting between them and the door. He starts moving towards it somewhat awkwardly.

“Thanks, Jensen,” calls Zach after him. Jensen briefly stops in his tracks to throw a forcedly casual “Anytime” over his shoulder before resuming his escape from the room. Andy scratches his head and looks at the floor because that relatively mundane interaction felt oddly intimate to witness. He isn’t even sure what Zach was thanking Jensen for.

“He warms up to you?” asks Reapered, sidling up to Sneaky’s bed with a cheeky grin.

“He’s warmed up to everyone,” responds Zach sleepily, setting his glasses aside once more.

Andy raises an eyebrow. “When you woke up you asked if he was still here? Was he…”

“Yeah, he sat there until I fell asleep, Dennis couldn’t even get him to move. Don’t know if he ate anything either, and he’s already a twig. Anyways, he cares about everyone. Just really bad at showing it for some reason, as always.” Sneaky yawns again. Smoothie takes that as his cue to leave and pull Reapered out the door with him as well.

Now they can go down to the kitchen, check on their potion supply, eat breakfast, check tonight’s weather to figure out possible patrols—relatively ordinary things for now, because if Reapered’s words are true, it will be a whole different story very, very soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts:  
> \- Sven's scythe is not Rhaast because that's hard to fit into canon, but it does talk, and it is sassy.  
> \- After some deliberation I've settled on a couple of pairings for this fic, but they are subtle and barely (if at all) romantic. Platonic is the way to go, peeps.  
> \- Anyone know what champion (old version) Reapered is?  
> \- I tried to write in a language barrier realistically but damn it was harder than I expected lol.  
> \- While thinking up ideas I somehow managed to throw most of the Golden Guardians players in here, so they'll be minor characters throughout the fic.  
> \- If this whole AU is still vague and/or confusing to you, hang tight! Full explanations of everything may come as soon as the next chapter :P  
> Thanks for reading! A comment of any sort would make my day :)


	3. void spike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric wakes up and tells his story. Jensen realizes something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Void Spike (W): Kha'Zix fires exploding spikes that deal physical damage to enemies hit. Kha'Zix is healed if he is also within the explosion radius. If he chooses to Evolve Spike Racks, Void Spike now fires three spikes in a cone, slow enemies hit, and reveals enemy champions hit for 2 seconds. Isolated targets are slowed for extra.

Eric wakes with a start, hands fumbling over the thick bandages wrapping his chest. His head is pounding and he’s gasping for breath like he’s just run a marathon.

His surroundings are completely unfamiliar. The bed he’s lying in is soft and warm, a vast improvement from what he had been used to for so many months before. From what he can see in the light that filters through the blinds, the room he lies in is mostly empty, with blank white walls, a sturdy blue chair in one corner, and a wooden shelf above the foot of the bed.

Before he can make any more sense out of his new surroundings, the door opens and he cowers into his sheets, pulling them over his head.

“Hello?” calls a thick, slightly accented male voice. A pause, and the sound of the door closing. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you or anything—”

“Where am I?” ventures Eric, slowly emerging from beneath the covers and sitting up against the headboard. His voice is surprisingly weak. Just how long has he been out? How is he even alive?

The man raises the blinds, allowing what remains of the sunset’s orange light to filter into the room, and Eric gets a first look at him—a broad-shouldered, brown-haired male who looks like he could rip Eric in half, but is also sporting a really bright grin. That’s nice. Eric relaxes a little.

“Where are you? Uh, that might be a long story, but we’re not going to hurt you or anything like that?”

“Where is…” Eric cuts himself off. He can’t say something like that just yet, these people are definitely still strangers. Maybe later. If he’s alive at the end of the day.

The man blinks at him, waiting with that same good-natured smile on his face. There is a weapon made of dark metal lying on the floor in front of him, a scythe that Eric had not noticed before. On the weapon’s blade, a glowing red eye appears.

 _These people are champions,_ Eric realizes with a jolt. They are powerful beings, no longer wholly human, with weapons and abilities that aid them in their roles. Everyone knows that. The question now is whether those who have rescued him have done so for good reasons, or if it’s just to kill him in a different way.

 _“Fresh meat?”_ murmurs a very deep voice, breaking Eric out of his reverie. It seems to be coming from the scythe. He shrinks back into his covers in response.

The man sighs heavily and gives the scythe a little kick. Eric watches in mingled fear and fascination as it slides gently across the wooden floor and comes to a stop against the farthest wall, the red eye nowhere to be seen.

“Sorry, ignore it, it wants violence above anything else and I’m not really about that.” The man walks forward and offers a hand for Eric to shake. “My name is Dennis Johnsen. Some call me Svenskeren or just Sven.”

Eric takes Dennis’s hand hesitantly, half-wondering if the man’s scythe is going to fly up and whack him to death. Thankfully it does not.

Just as he’s about to introduce himself, the door slowly creaks open behind Dennis and two more people enter—one of them, with bandages covering his upper body, is leaning on the other’s shoulder.

“There are more people coming, just wait so you won’t have to introduce yourself multiple times,” says Dennis with a laugh. He motions towards the injured one, who is now sitting in the blue chair and waving at Eric. “That’s Zach Scuderi. We usually just call him Sneaky.” Then he points to the other man. “And that’s Nicolaj Jensen.”

“Just call me Jensen.” The other man is now standing at the foot of Eric’s bed, watching him with icy gray-blue eyes. It’s quite unnerving.

“Hi,” he manages, awkwardly looking away.

“Where are Smoothie and Reapered?” asks Sneaky from the chair, adjusting his glasses and pushing his hair back with a practiced motion.

Dennis replies, “On their way,” just as the bedroom door once again flies open and two black-haired men enter. One is holding a wooden crate. Behind them floats a gigantic multi-pronged blade of some sort. Eric gulps.

“Don’t worry! Not for you,” one of them chirps. His heavy accent reminds Eric of Changseok, which brings on a wave of sorrow so strong it almost makes him physically cringe. He had forgotten just how much he missed Changseok.

But Changseok is gone. Probably dead. If not dead, he suffered a fate worse than death. Eric shakes himself out of his depressing thoughts because this is no time to be distracted.

“I’m Andy Ta, also known as Smoothie. The knife guy here is Reapered, our advisor,” says the stockier man. “And yeah, don’t worry about the knives, he isn’t going to hurt you. Probably.” They both grin at him.

Eric smiles hesitantly back as the whole room’s eyes settle on him. “Uh, so… my name is Eric Ritchie,” he says. When he sees everyone collectively lean in a little bit, he tries to raise his voice. “I went into the Black Mist because I had no other choice, I know what it can do, but I… um…” He trails off because there's not much else he wants to say before he knows he can trust these people for sure. “Thank you for saving me. What exactly… who are you? And what happened to me?”

A brief silence, in which Reapered pats Smoothie on the back and jerks his head in Eric’s direction as if to say, _Go ahead, explain._

“We’re Shadow Walkers. Champions. Our work is not as universally loved as other Champions’ work… but we’ll explain that later.

“We found you late last night, severely wounded but somehow not dead.” Andy’s face is inscrutable, the easy smile from before completely gone. “Normally we wouldn’t pick up random humans off the street and take them in, but we think that you’re… special.”

“I’m special?” says Eric, voice faint, face scrunched up. He gives a disbelieving laugh. How can that be true? “What do you mean, I’m special?”

“Well,” Andy starts, “in case you didn’t notice, you had a spike in your chest, but you’re alive and well. More than that, actually, since you just need a little more rest and you’ll be perfectly healthy. And…”

He trails off, his eyes fixed upon the wooden shelf. The sealed crate that Reapered had placed on it just minutes earlier has burst open. Six notched, curved blades rise slowly from it. As Eric watches in amazement, feeling a strange warmth pulsing within his chest, they arrange themselves into a neat line, suspended in the air above his bed.

_Am I really doing that?_

On the other end of the bed, Reapered watches the spectacle with a mysterious smile.

“...That’s what we mean by ‘you’re special.’” Andy points at the blades, which are now revolving slowly over Eric’s head.

“Can you feel?” Reapered speaks up, holding up his right hand and looking expectantly at Eric. “Do this. Do the same. Think about controlling the blades.”

Slowly, hesitantly, Eric raises his right hand into the air. The warmth from before shoots out to his fingertips for just a moment and suddenly the blades flatten in the air, arranging themselves like the keys of a piano. They fall a second later into their box, which Reapered has picked up and held aloft in anticipation, when he loses control of them, but already Eric knows that his rescuers aren’t lying. He does have powers! What exactly they are, he does not know, but it looks like he might be given the chance to find out.

Despite his growing exhaustion, Eric fields their questions about where he came from. “I’ve been on the run for a while,” he says when Dennis asks. “The Mist took over my college when I was 18, so I fled and came here.”

“Why here?” asks Andy from the foot of Eric’s bed, where he still stands. “We’ve been wondering why there are so many people here.”

“Safety. We heard that there would be mages here to keep us safe. But it wasn’t as simple as we thought.” Eric hesitates, aware of the entire room’s eyes on him. “How much have you guys watched humans? How much do you know about how we live right now?”

“Not much,” says Jensen coolly.

“Well, alright. It’s not good. The people with the most gold or with the right magic can make a lot of money renting out places to live. They offer enchantments that ward off Black Mist… but for a steep cost. If we want to survive, we have no choice but to pay. So after three months, all of the money I had ever saved up was gone.”

Eric lets the words sink in, watching shock and disgust flicker across the faces of everyone else in the room.

“Abuse of power,” declares Andy with a shake of his head. “Shit, we really should have kept an eye on regular life in the city, maybe we could have done something. How long has this been happening?”

“Since the moment the Black Mist entered our world. A year? Maybe two?”

“Wait… your money lasted through three months of living on your own? Just how much money did you have?” Zach raises an eyebrow.

“I didn’t live alone. I came here with my friend Matt,” Eric replies, cringing when he thinks about his best friend. _Where is he? He has to be alive out there somewhere._ “And we had a friend who already lived here, although he was about to be evicted when we showed up. His name was Changseok.”

“Was,” mutters Jensen from the corner. His eyes are piercing. “So he’s dead?”

An awkward pause, in which Sneaky shoots Jensen a stern look. “He disappeared a couple of weeks ago,” replies Eric with a shrug, trying to keep any emotion from showing. “One foggy night he went to work and just… never came back.” He curses internally when his voice wavers on the last few words.

“I’m sorry,” says Jensen softly, tentatively. There’s an odd expression on his face, a strange mix of horror and pity. It’s the first hint of emotion that Eric has seen from him so far—although it’s gone in an instant, smoothed over again within seconds.

“It’s okay.” He sighs shakily and looks away from Jensen. “We all knew deep down that something was eventually going to go wrong. But after that Matt and I were determined to survive, for him.

“We lived with Changseok for a while, maybe half a year,” he continues, as Reapered turns on the lights. “Just the three of us in an empty apartment about the size of a bathroom—the smallest one we could get.”

“That small? For three of you?” Andy looks puzzled. “How did you all fit in there?”

“We didn’t really,” Eric replies. “We slept on the floor. But Changseok was fine with us being there, told us anything was better than eviction, and up until last month Matt and I were able to contribute in paying rent despite not being able to find work. A month ago we cut down to one meal a day because we needed to be able to pay rent for as long as possible.”

“No wonder you’re a twig,” Dennis jokes. It’s playful, it makes Eric smile a little and brings on a wave of hushed laughter from Andy.

“No work? Why? And none of your other friends helped you out?” Jensen asks, only a slight smile betraying his amusement at Dennis’s words.

“Most places closed two months ago, after that particularly bad night wiped out a huge chunk of town. The store Changseok worked at closed down shortly after he disappeared. As for other friends, we only found out three days ago that one of our classmates had escaped the Mist and had been living in this city too—Tristan, we didn’t even realize he was alive—but before that we figured Changseok didn’t live near any of our friends. And besides, I think most of them are dead. Lots of them disappeared, just like Changseok. The Black Mist, the monsters… the opening of the Void hasn’t been kind.”

His voice is already a little raspy and he’s really tired, but there’s a lot more to tell.

“Eric, you told us what happened to Changseok. But what happened to Matt?” Dennis’s voice is quiet, his tone gentle.

The sky is pitch black—tonight is a clear night, with no Black Mist in sight, but a dark night all the same. Eric gazes out the window into the inky darkness and takes a deep breath.

“Last night, we were set to be evicted. We knew we had no choice but to move, even though it wasn’t the clear night we had been hoping for. So we tried to go across town to Tristan’s place. He’s living with a bunch of other guys, they’re making it work somehow, haven’t lost anyone so far. Even if they didn’t have space Matt and I knew they would at least let us stay for a bit, until we could find some way to live elsewhere.

“So we packed up what little we had into backpacks and headed out…”

* * *

_“Are you okay?”_

_They have walked through many, many streets and are about halfway to their destination. Matt shines his flashlight into the gloom; the beam barely penetrates the thick Black Mist, instead becoming a shaking circle of light against the fog. He coughs._

_“Are you okay?” Eric repeats, peering nervously at his friend’s face. “Your hands are trembling.”_

_“Yeah, yeah,” Matt replies, but he’s still coughing, his steps faltering._

_“I can carry your stuff, just keep walking—” says Eric with a frown, already reaching for his friend’s backpack._

_But Matt will have none of it, stubbornly holding onto his bag. “Eric, it’s fine, I’m fine. Let’s keep going.”_

_They move on in silence. Barely another minute later, Matt’s walk becomes more of a stumble. He doesn’t seem to notice. Eric, however, tugs insistently at his companion’s arm, and Matt finally allows himself to be led along._

_“We’re going to Changseok’s workplace,” mutters Eric when Matt asks. He steers Matt into the nearest alleyway, speaking quickly and trying to ignore the dread that has surfaced within him at the situation. “Or his old one, anyway. He said the back door of the store was sometimes unlocked. You need to get out of the Mist, and it’s the closest protected place we can hope for right now.”_

_They’re only a few steps from the other end of that alley when Matt starts to sway, tottering to one side despite Eric’s best efforts to guide him. “Just a tiny bit… dizzy,” he mumbles, leaning against a wall. “Only need a second… to catch… my breath…”_

_“Matt, listen to me, we have to keep moving!” Eric keeps him upright as his knees buckle and he starts to slide down to the ground. “You have to get inside, you can’t stay out here any longer—”_

_And that’s when it happens. Right next to Matt, as though spawned by the roiling Black Mist that surrounds them, a gigantic insect-like monster materializes._

_Matt screams and staggers towards Eric on shaky legs. “What the fuck is that?!”_

_“I don’t know!” Eric shouts. The creature looks about 8 feet tall, with jagged teeth, a spiked exoskeleton, translucent wings, and glowing green eyes. But the real terror lies in its claws, huge razor-sharp things that resemble machetes more than anything else. And those claws are heading straight for Matt’s neck._

_Somehow Matt throws himself to one side with a yelp of pain, avoiding the bladelike claws entirely. “Run,” he croaks, struggling to stand. “Go!”_

_“What? No!” Shaking his head, Eric hauls his friend back up and starts to drag him away from the creature. It is preparing to pounce, its wings flapping. “Matt, can you run?”_

_“I can’t,” Matt gasps, and then heavy coughs wrack his body once more. “I can’t run… I can’t… fucking breathe…” He sags a little in Eric’s grip, head lolling back; when Eric takes a quick glance at his friend’s face, he sees bright red trailing from the corner of his mouth._

_“Matt?” he hisses. No coherent answer, just a pained groan. Panic begins to take control. They’ve held their own against the Black Mist for so long, at least half an hour, remarkable for mere humans—but now Matt is slowly dying to it. Most of the buildings that surround them are abandoned and have no enchantment keeping out Black Mist, so they would be useless in saving Matt’s life. If they take too long to move, the now-invisible monster currently hunting them will surely rip them both to shreds. What the hell can Eric even do?_

_Well, he has to try. He musters whatever strength he has left and hurries from the alleyway almost at a sprint.  For the first time ever he is glad that they haven’t had much to eat lately, because Matt would be harder to carry otherwise. Now if they can just shake off the creature stalking them long enough to reach the door of Changseok’s workplace—_

_The monster appears right in front of them. Eric changes direction as abruptly as possible and runs back through the alley, the little hope he had held onto quickly disappearing. Matt’s body is completely limp in his arms now._

_There is nowhere left to run._

_“Eric?” Matt’s voice is a soft rasp that Eric almost loses in the night breeze. He props Matt up against the alley wall and bends to listen more closely. “Eric, thank you…” His best friend’s words fall in a shaky whisper. “But please, run…”_

_“I’m not fucking leaving without you!” snaps Eric. There are frustrated tears pricking at his eyes; he rubs them away as quickly as he can. “We go together, dead or alive. So don’t say that again.”_

_Maybe Matt has another argument, but he doesn’t get to say it because the creature is upon them within seconds, a whirl of wings and claws. The flat side of one bladelike claw smashes into Eric’s stomach and sends him flying down the alley, back in the direction they had come from. The other claw closes almost daintily around Matt’s limp form._

_Breathless, vision blurring, Eric struggles to get up. “Matt,” he gasps out through the dull ringing in his ears. Just barely he can make out the shape of the monster, eyes glowing in the fog, wings fluttering, holding something in its claws—someone—_

_“No!” he chokes, hurling himself forward. The monster stops, turns—and then the most intense pain courses through Eric’s body, radiating out from the center of his chest all the way to his fingers and toes. He hits the ground face-up and woozy, mud or perhaps blood soaking into his hair and clothing, and then he watches what little he can see of the stars above begin to blur together._

_Maybe he cries out in pain. Maybe he doesn’t make a sound. Either way, he hears Matt’s hoarse voice very clearly, sounding absolutely wrecked, screaming out his name over and over again…. getting further away by the second._

_Eric raises shaking fingers to his chest and finds a spike perhaps the size of a kitchen knife jutting out of his body. The blurry stars in the sky begin to fade from his sight…_

* * *

By the end of the story his eyes are suspiciously shiny, his voice breaking every few words. Sneaky watches as Smoothie surreptitiously hands Eric a tissue, and then they all pretend not to notice as he wipes at his eyes furiously.

“...When I woke up briefly, lying in the mud, the spike wasn’t there, just the outline of it. I saw something greenish-blue, floating above me, and I thought that maybe I was about to die. And, well… that’s all I remember,” finishes Eric with a tiny sniffle.

Zach wonders vaguely if he has ever driven a spear through the shadowy soul of any of Eric’s friends, but just the thought causes a surge of guilt, and he doesn’t like feeling stuff like that. He resolutely stops thinking about it.

“Well, you’re here with us now,” Smoothie offers. “It’s safe here. And as time goes on you won’t have to worry about the Black Mist anymore either.”

Eric nods but doesn’t say anything in reply.

“And you think Matt isn’t dead?” Jensen’s voice rises from where he sits on the floor. Blunt as always.

It takes a long time for Eric to answer, and when he finally does, his voice is quiet, unsure. “I don’t know.”

The silence returns as all of them search for a reply. In the end Reapered talks first. “You are tired,” he says, patting Eric on the shoulder. “Sleep and be stronger. We talk with you tomorrow, explain then. Trust us, here you are safe.” They rise and leave him to get some rest.

“What was that?” Dennis inquires as soon as the door closes. “What kind of power is that? I’ve never heard of a champion type that can do that. And where did you get those blades from?”

Smoothie shrugs. “Reapered says that part of Eric is Blade Dancer. I haven’t heard of it either. And then the other half is Eye of Twilight, which we already knew about.”

“Blades I order yesterday from Lourlo,” Reapered answers.

“The Fire Below the Mountain?”

“Yes, Golden Guardians’ Lourlo. I ask for these after rescuing Eric. So he forges these blades quickly and at good price.” Reapered is grinning widely. “What do we call Eric? Mix of Blade Dancer, Eye of Twilight?”

“Eye Dancer,” says Andy with a laugh. Dennis and Reapered crack up. Jensen says nothing, his face weirdly expressionless. Watching him, Zach narrows his eyes.

“Okay, but seriously. Twilight Blade?” offers Andy through another bout of giggles. The others agree that it sounds right for their newest member and quickly disperse to their rooms—all except Nicolaj, who wordlessly offers Zach his arm as support.

Sneaky watches Jensen carefully as they head back up the stairs together, but can’t quite decipher his odd expression, the same one that he had worn as Eric talked about Changseok.

Normally Zach wouldn’t ask about this, but he thinks he can guess what Jensen is thinking about.

They reach Sneaky’s room. “Jensen,” he calls as his teammate lets go of his arm and turns to head for his own room. “Jensen, what was that reaction to Changseok’s name for?”

“I took his soul,” Jensen mutters. He turns around, looking strangely bitter. “Lee Changseok, age 24. Two weeks ago I found him when I was on patrol alone.”

“Damn,” says Sneaky blankly, holding onto the doorframe, because he was right, he knows exactly where this is going.

“He was barely holding on, the Mist had basically taken all of him. Right before I reaped him he said, ‘Take care of them, please.’ And then…” With a sigh, Jensen lowers his head. “And then I took his soul and sent it down to the Shadow Isles.”

“Damn,” Sneaky repeats, his grip on the doorframe tightening. He doesn’t really know what else to say.

“We’ll tell Eric tomorrow, right?” Jensen looks up at Sneaky, his speech becoming more rapid, almost frantic. The look on his face can only be described as sorrowful now. “We’ll tell him what we do, we’ll tell him that Mist-related disappearances end with us taking humans’ souls to their rightful resting place. Like the deaths of his friends. He’ll know that we have a hand in their passing. Right?”

Is that _guilt_ Zach sees in his eyes? Jensen, the one who can dispatch souls with a single merciless blow, who always makes any necessary kills with coldness and efficiency?

“Will he understand? Or will he…” Jensen abruptly breaks off his sentence, shakes his head, then turns away to continue walking back to his room. “Good night, Sneaky.”

“Good night, Jensen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts:  
> \- The part about Matt, Eric, and Changseok (GBM, their EUnited midlaner) is actually true irl—the three of them lived this way during their Korea bootcamp. One meal a day, sleeping on the floor in an apartment that small, and playing soloq. It was taken directly from an interview with Deftly. When I read it I was inspired to include it somewhere in a fic, and so it showed up here: the first scene I ever wrote from this AU :o  
> \- Humans generally know champions exist and that they are powerful; they also understand that Black Mist leads to disappearances. They usually don't quite know specifics though.  
> \- The GGS boys are another team of champions with a different purpose—so they're not Shadow Walkers. (Lourlo is Ornn, btw.) They're on good terms with almost all other champion teams nearby.  
> \- I know I mentioned the human corruption issue a lot in this chapter, but I can't explore that much in later chapters, so that whole problem probably just will fade into the background of the story.  
> \- Better explanations for what Cloud9 does = next chapter.
> 
> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed the chapter!


	4. spirit's refuge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric grapples with revelations and goes to see friends.  
> (Alternatively: Reapered buys candy, because that makes everything better.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spirit's Refuge (W): Attacks that would hit Shen or his allies near his spirit blade are blocked.

Eric wakes the next morning to the sound of a girl’s laughter echoing through his room. At first it spooks him, because there is clearly no one here with him, no matter where he looks, but after he gets out of bed and walks around listening for the source, he determines that the mysterious laughter is coming from vents on the floor, right next to the blue chair. That’s fine. Certainly not the weirdest thing he’s come across in the last twenty-four hours.

As the laughter dies out, he reaches to unwrap the bandages covering his wound and gasps in surprise because _there is no wound._ His skin is perfectly clean, as if nothing ever happened. How is that even possible?

Someone has clearly been in Eric’s room since he fell asleep, because there is a dresser filled with neutral-toned clothing and a long mirror hung on the door. He walks over to the mirror and takes a long look at himself: scrawny, with his ribs clearly visible and a slightly lost look in his eyes. Surely he is underweight, considering how he’s been eating progressively less over the last few months.

“I look awful,” he mutters aloud. Though, to be fair, he feels better than he looks right now. Even though there’s a dull ache in his chest every time he inhales too sharply, nothing else is really causing him pain at the moment. And he can walk around without any discomfort, although running is probably out of the question for now.

Someone knocks on the door, jolting Eric out of his reverie. “Hold on,” he calls, scrambling to get dressed. “Uh, who is it?”

“Hi, Eric!” chirps a very female voice, and he freezes with his shirt half over his head. “Mind if I come in?”

“Um… yeah, just a second!” he chokes as he finishes getting dressed, because he definitely did not realize there was a girl in this house.

She’s Marissa, a brown-haired, freckled woman who acts as some sort of manager for the team. “I cook, clean, other stuff they’re too bad at doing,” she says, pursing her lips and pulling at her ponytail. “These guys are surprisingly incompetent, you’d think such powerful men would understand how to properly wash dishes.”

“So are you a champion too?”

She nods. “Yeah, I am! I’m a Storm’s Fury. A wind spirit, basically. I’m the emergency medic for minor stuff, but I only come around on clear nights, the Black Mist isn’t good for me to travel in.”

“And the laughing earlier… uh, was that you too?”

Marissa bursts into loud laughter once again. Eric feels himself relaxing a little more. “Yeah! This morning Andy somehow managed to mess up making oatmeal. Can you believe these idiots? Oatmeal! You probably heard me through the vents? I set those up a while ago so that any Black Mist let in can just be automatically siphoned away.”

 _This is weird,_ Eric thinks as she takes him to the kitchen, talking animatedly about the last time Andy almost burned it down. _I’ve been here for a couple of days, I don’t know what these champions do, and yet I feel… safe?_

 

It’s a little scary just how quickly Eric and Marissa seem to click—although Dennis figures it’s probably good for both of them. They’re getting along like best friends already. Eric needs someone to help him feel comfortable, even if it isn’t necessarily one of them.

He turns to look at Jensen, who has been sitting on the couch unmoving for at least ten minutes with his weapons on the table before him. Normally Dennis would just leave him to stew in his own thoughts, but at some point soon they’ll all have to sit down and have that dreaded conversation. Maybe Marissa can help soften the blow they’re about to deliver. They can’t avoid the topic forever.

He sits down on the couch and pokes his teammate. “Jensen?”

“Yeah, I know, I’ve got to think of something, because I can’t just say it outright, yeah.” Jensen’s voice rises, his face growing more and more panicked. Dennis pats him on the back as encouragingly as possible and braces himself for the worst. “But what do I even say? ‘Oh hey Eric, this is your new home, what we do here is take souls out of dying humans and throw them into some sort of afterlife, and by the way I was the one that took your friend’s soul and that’s kinda why he never came back!’ I mean, can you imagine—”

“Wait,” a voice pipes up from the doorway connecting the living room to the kitchen. Eric stands in the doorway, one hand braced against the wall as though trying to keep himself upright, face frozen in shock. Marissa is standing behind him looking anxious. “You _what?”_

“Fuck,” Dennis swears under his breath.

* * *

Eric takes it surprisingly well, without panic or any sort of loud reaction. Maybe it has to do with the fact that he and Matt clearly assumed Changseok was dead from the moment he disappeared. He doesn’t meet Jensen’s eyes as he hears the explanation though, instead staring at one spot on the table with his fingers digging into the armrest of his chair. That might be a problem in the future, but for now Jensen doesn’t think about dealing with it, just curls his toes nervously into the carpet and tries not to shrink into himself.

“Shadow Walkers are specifically supposed to bring human souls to the Shadow Isles,” starts Smoothie, glancing quickly between Nicolaj and Eric. “When we go on patrol there are sometimes humans who are slowly wasting away under the effects of Black Mist. I’m sure you’ve seen or heard about that.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about it. They’re still alive but kind of become undead, ghoulish versions of themselves.”

“Yeah, exactly. We call those souls Misted. So we often reap those human souls before they get to the point of Misting, because it would be even worse if we didn’t… and because we’re supposed to.” Andy leans back into the couch; Eric raises an eyebrow at the words “supposed to,” but doesn’t offer any thoughts. “We also fight Void monsters like Kha’Zix, the one that preyed upon you and Matt, or Rek’Sai, the one that tried to eat us both and almost killed Sneaky.”

“Why?” The word leaves Eric’s lips abruptly, unexpectedly. When he doesn’t get an immediate answer, he presses on. “Why did the Black Mist start to take over the human world? Why are there these Void monsters? And where did you come from?”

“The Black Mist wasn’t always was like this,” Sneaky begins. “Many years ago Mist was easily predictable. We could easily tell what night it would show up on. Everyone could.”

“It was weaker, too,” adds Sven. “There was more time for humans to get out of the Mist. They could actually escape it before becoming Misted, if they tried hard enough.”

“But recently it’s gotten thicker and it moves faster. And it’s a lot harder to predict. Even now, we’ll think it’s going to be a clear night and then Black Mist sweeps through the city and we have to send out a patrol.” Andy shrugs. “As this has happened, Void monsters have started popping up too. We don’t actually know why this is happening, but we do think it has something to do with this: someone or something created an opening to the Void, and that intensified the Black Mist while allowing these creatures to crawl out and terrorize humans. We’re still trying to figure out the exact cause and how much we can do to fix the whole issue.”

“As for where we come from… well, we were all humans once,” says Zach. “I was part of this Shadow Walker team, Cloud9, before any of these guys were, I discovered my powers pretty early. We’ve had members leave and join throughout the years. Most recently Impact and Contractz left us and Dennis came here from a different Shadow Walker team named TSM.”

“TSM operates in a different city. When they kicked me I just came here instead, since I had heard about Contractz leaving for a different team, and we’re both Shadow Reapers.”

Eric nods slowly. “So what types of champions are you?”

“Our powers and weapons tend to involve darker magic than other roles. I’m a Chain Warden. You haven’t seen me with them yet, but I have a ton of chains all attached to a magical lantern, which I use to store souls when I go on patrol. Then I send them away to the Isles at the end of the night.” Andy frowns. “I’d summon the lantern now, but I think you’ll see it eventually anyways.”

Sneaky speaks up. “I’m a Spear of Vengeance. I kinda hop about, throw a ton of spears, and then rip them all out at once to do a lot of damage. I also have a Sentinel, that green-blue floating thing that found you and analyzed you, it’s used to see if souls are past the point of no return and we have to take them or not. Smoothie is my Oathsworn, meaning we’re bonded in a weird way? Like, I can literally teleport him to my side. It’s weird.”

“Sneaky doesn’t have a way to store the souls that he reaps, and my chains are not very efficient at reaping the souls in the first place, so we always have to go on patrol together. That’s why we’re bonded,” Smoothie explains.

“Like I said, I’m a Shadow Reaper. I have this scythe”—Dennis holds up said weapon, which immediately closes its glowing eye— “that I can put energy into. It can hold souls in it as well, they give it a little bit of energy but not that much. The more of me that I let it have, the more quickly I can travel through shadows.”

“You said it was violent,” Eric says quietly. “So when you give it more energy, does it… change you?”

“Of course,” Dennis answers without hesitation. “It makes me a bit weaker and a lot more bloodthirsty. Less control. When it gets to a certain amount of power, it doesn’t like giving that power back to me. Usually I put no power into it. It’s a terrible price to pay, so I only do it when absolutely necessary. I haven’t had to pay that price too much yet.”

Jensen raises his head, finally meeting Eric’s gaze for a split second. “I’m a Master of Shadows,” he says. “I teleport between the darkest shadows within seconds and fight with my gauntlets or shurikens.”

Eric’s eyes fall upon the weapons sitting on the table. Their newest member’s face twists, a pained expression replacing the blank mask from before. From where she stands next to his chair, Marissa pats him on the shoulder.

“Reapered is a Will of the Blades, he can mentally control the large four-pronged blade you saw yesterday. No one ever shows up as the same type of champion anymore. But he says your powers are an extension of his. Similar, really.” Andy’s face betrays his anxiety at the tense situation; he’s speaking rapidly too, although his voice is perfectly even.

No reply from Eric, although his facial expression has smoothed out some and he looks a little less wretched.

Zach cuts in now, as calm as ever. “You’re a Blade Dancer, which is already something new. But you’re also an Eye of Twilight. And, uh, we’ve never seen anything quite like you. Two champion types in one body.”

“What can I do?” ventures Eric after an awkward pause. “What do those titles mean for me?”

“We don’t know what a Blade Dancer does, we’ve never heard of one. But Eye of Twilight is a defensive champion class. You can protect yourself and others with your own Energy by forming shields.”

“Is that why I survived? Against… Kha’Zix?”

“Yep,” Zach answers. “You formed an Energy shield and that mitigated most of the damage the spike would have done to you.”

“You’ll get more powerful with training,” Andy adds. “Reapered is good at that. He helped me improve a lot too, back when I joined this team I didn’t know much.”

With the explanation over, the rest of the team starts filing one by one out of the room. Dennis shoots Jensen a meaningful look right before he leaves. Marissa whispers something into Eric’s ear, but he murmurs, “No, it’s okay,” and she leaves the room as well, albeit with hesitation.

That leaves Eric and Nicolaj sitting in silence.

“You know… Changseok was almost completely gone when I got to him. He was only a few minutes away from completely Misted. He didn’t know where he was. And he said… he said ‘take care of them, please.’ At the time I didn’t know what he meant, but now… I just want you to know, I fully intend to do that. We all do,” Jensen finally says, looking up to check Eric’s reaction. Eric says nothing, eyes still focused on that one spot on the table, although his hand clearly tightens around the armrest of his chair again.

“I’m sorry,” Jensen starts again after a while. “I—I’m not good at this, you know. I take a lot of lives before the Mist can get them. Because I’m supposed to. And because the others are—they’re softer than I am. Supposedly. So they let me do it. Instead of them.”

His eyes are starting to sting and he hates that so much. It’s been a while since he last got emotional over killing some stupid human. He doesn’t even know who Changseok is, and he doesn’t even know Eric that well yet!

“You’re supposed to,” answers Eric without looking up. He sighs. It’s quiet, almost resigned. “I’m going to have to do that too. I’m going to have to… I’m going to have to kill people, basically. Right?”

Jensen doesn’t sugarcoat it (as usual). “Of course.”

Silence again as he raises his head but avoids Jensen’s gaze. It feels like an eternity passes before Eric lets their eyes meet and he speaks again, words devoid of any emotion.

“Was it quick?”

“Very quick.” Jensen’s voice wobbles and he curses himself because now Eric doesn’t even seem angry, he just seems empty. That’s about all he can take of that conversation, so he walks himself out of the room without another word, leaving Eric alone.

* * *

Reapered returns from his customary trip into town with a couple of cloth bags dangling from his blade. Most of the team is sitting in the kitchen; the house seems oddly quiet. Marissa is trying to make lunch without disturbing the whispered discussion going on at the table.

“Hey, what happen now guys?”

“We, uh, told Eric about what we do and other stuff like that.” Andy smiles quickly, but it’s a little forced. “I think Jensen is talking with him now? Uh, what did you get?”

“Everything Marissa ask for. Oh, and candy.” Hangyu smiles and holds up one of the bags, feeling a little too proud of himself when Marissa sighs.

“This is what I get for letting you go to the store alone.”

They’re interrupted by Jensen entering the kitchen. He looks really upset—which is weird, Reapered hasn’t seen Jensen looking like this in a while. Normally the guy is just really cold about everything.

“What happen?”

“You know how I took his friend’s soul? Changseok?” Jensen looks distraught even as he plops himself down at the table next to Sneaky and receives a sympathetic pat on the back. “Well, I had to tell him about that.”

“Hmph,” Hangyu replies, shoving his worry aside momentarily. “I go check on him. It will be okay.”

He finds Eric sitting alone and unmoving in the living room, staring blankly at nothing in particular. “Eric?” he calls out, voice hushed.

“Oh—hey,” their newest member replies, turning to face Reapered. He smiles, but it looks weak and strained. “What’s up?”

Time to get straight to the point. “Jensen did what was best,” asserts Hangyu. Before Eric can say anything, he continues, “If not for Jensen, your friend suffer more and perhaps even hurt Jensen. Believe me.”

“I understand that,” says Eric with a sigh. “And I can’t blame him. I think I just… need a little time.”

“Maybe talk with someone?” Hangyu says the words that Eric leaves unspoken. Clearly their newest member is in need of someone to discuss and process recent developments with, most likely someone who knew how much Changseok meant to him. His best friend Matthew would fit this criteria, but seeing as he’s probably dead… “Yesterday you mention a friend? Tristan?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah. He’s living with a bunch of others in a building on the edge of town. I can’t name it but I know where it is.”

Hangyu can hear the anticipation in Eric’s voice, so he goes ahead and just makes the offer: “We can bring you to catch up with them on next clear night. Maybe even tonight.”

“Really?” His mood seems to have brightened considerably.

Reapered nods. “After that we begin training, make sure to pick your name for talk to other teams.”

“Like a nickname? Like Sneaky or Smoothie?”

“Yes. Sometimes when talk to other teams, cannot trust them with real name right away.” Eric nods. “All I ask for you to trust Jensen. If you have to be mad at anyone—”

“I don’t want to be mad at anyone,” Eric mutters. “I… I understand. I know that’s what he had to do. I can’t be mad, knowing that I’ll later have to do that myself.”

That’s a pretty good answer. Reapered lets the subject drop. “If no Mist tonight, I have someone bring you to your friends. Otherwise we start training tonight and wait for clear night to bring you there.” He pats Eric on the shoulder and offers his most reassuring smile, which the Twilight Blade hesitantly returns. Then he holds up one of the cloth bags. “Candy?”

Eric starts laughing as Hangyu drops the bag of candy into his lap and leaves the room with a merry wave.

* * *

Luckily for Eric, it’s a clear night. Unluckily for Eric, it’s Jensen who will be transporting him to Tristan’s place. Well, maybe not unluckily—Eric certainly can’t blame Jensen for doing his job, and he knows that very well. Maybe it’s better to get the awkwardness out of the way early.

Of course, this doesn’t stop Jensen from seemingly walking on eggshells around Eric as they step out of the front door. “Please relax,” Eric says, a bit sharply, and the other man jumps. He softens his tone: “I’m not, like, mad at you or anything. It’s okay. I promise.”

The brief silence that follows is slightly awkward and Eric is beginning to regret saying anything when Jensen breaks it with, “Oh, okay, sorry.” He shuffles his feet awkwardly. “So I’m going to teleport you over there, and then when you’re done…” Jensen pulls a shuriken from the pocket of his oversized hoodie. “You can just throw this into the air when you want me to come get you. Just make sure you don’t let it hit you on the way down.”

Eric chuckles. “Alright.”

“But first, we’re going to teleport there together.” The Master of Shadows holds out the shuriken with a nod. “Hold onto this, don’t touch the blades.” Carefully, Eric takes hold of the weapon.

“And then you know where Tristan lives, right?” Eric nods. “Okay. Visualize that place in your head. Think about it as vividly, as in detail as you can. And don’t stop.”

So Eric does. He closes his eyes and thinks back to the abandoned storefront that Tristan and a couple of others had boarded up and somehow fortified against Black Mist, its wooden door heavy and sturdy, the flickering lights on its ceiling rather dim. He’s just picturing the glass window when there’s a strange rushing sensation and he opens his eyes into complete darkness.

“Almost there,” comes Jensen’s voice from somewhere on his right. Sure enough, a few more seconds pass and then the world seems to materialize around them, coming sharply into view.

They’re standing right in front of the heavy wooden door, in the slightest of shadows. The building looks better than Eric remembers it—the last time he was here, perhaps two or three months ago, a window was held together by tape, the walls looked patchy, and the roof was about to crumble. Now the glass windows are all strangely pristine and the walls look more solid. The crumbling bits on the roof look like they’ve been replaced.

“Well, go ahead,” says Jensen quietly. As Eric nods and reaches to knock on the door, his companion backs up into a farther shadow and watches warily from a distance.

No answer at first. Eric knocks again and immediately a familiar voice yells, “Who is it?”

“Greyson!” he calls, a relieved smile breaking out on his face. “It’s Eric.”

“Wait, what?” There’s a grunt of effort, and then the door swings open. In the doorway stands a grinning blonde-haired man. “Eric, hey! I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“Yeah, I—” Eric turns and nods to Jensen, who waves and melts away into the darkness as Greyson swings the door shut. “I wanted to come here with Matt a couple days ago, but…”

“Well, if you’re here alone, something must have happened, huh?” Greyson’s grin fades, replaced by a serious look. “Don't tell me…”

“Changseok,” replies Eric, swallowing hard.

“And Matt…?” A single glance at the expression on Eric’s face must be enough, because Greyson immediately whips around and heads for the rooms in the back of the store, turning on the lights as he does so. “Shit. Okay, I’ll get the others.”

* * *

“I think he’s a psychopath,” Marissa yells from the kitchen.

“Eric? Why?”

“Look!” She comes running from the kitchen brandishing the large cloth bag of candy in one hand and an empty candy pouch in the other. “He’s crazy! Reapered bought black licorice on accident, and the guy actually _ate a lot of it!”_

Smoothie and Reapered fall into a laughing heap on the living room carpet. Even Jensen, who’s just come back from his escort mission, cracks a smile as he sits down on the couch.

“Are you sure he didn’t eat that by mistake?” Svenskeren asks through barely suppressed snorts of laughter.

“He ate the whole little bag, he must actually like it!” Marissa shrieks, waving her arms wildly. “What’s wrong with Eric, seriously?”

“Ask him if he’ll make that his name,” jokes Andy from where he lies under Reapered on the rug, still giggling. “We can just call him Licorice.”

Watching them laughing and joking from where he stands atop the stairs, Sneaky thinks, _I couldn’t have asked for a better team._

* * *

He doesn’t even have to say anything for Tristan to understand something is wrong. His friend comes running out from his room with his damage control face on—Eric can recognize that one from a mile away.

“So Changseok and Matt are gone?” is the first thing Tristan says, his voice guarded. Eric honestly doesn’t know how he’s holding it together right now. After all, Tristan had been as close with Changseok as Eric and Matt were… not to mention how close-knit of a friend group Eric, Matt, and Tristan had always been.

“Changseok got caught in the Mist. He’s gone.”

“You’re not answering the part about Matt.”

“I don’t know what happened to Matt,” Eric sighs as Raymond and Colin join them, quietly taking seats around the table. Greyson and Keith come with water for everyone a few seconds later.

He tells them the whole story—not the part about living with Changseok, because they already knew that, but the one of his and Matt’s desperate attempt to reach this building from where they had lived across town, and then of the team of champions that had rescued him shortly afterwards.

“Oh god,” mutters Tristan, voice shaky, when Eric has finished speaking. “So Matt is just… missing.” The pain in his friend’s eyes is all too raw. Eric quickly looks away.

“Yeah,” he replies, trying to keep his own voice steady and failing miserably. “He might be.” They can all sense the hope behind his words—it is clear that Eric will still be looking for any trace of Matt, any clue towards his fate, even if only for closure.

“So these champions took you in and you’ll be part of them now?” Keith cracks a smile. He's clearly trying to lighten the mood. “Bro, you’re crazy! What can you do?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure yet. I can shield myself and others, and I can apparently telekinetically wield some knives? But I don’t have much control over it yet.”

“How did they know you were something special? I’m guessing it was the immunity to Black Mist?” Raymond speaks up, looking perplexed.

“Yeah, I mean, the Kha’Zix spike was something, but they said that the Mist was a big reason too.”

“That makes sense,” Greyson pipes up. “I’m sure you remember that one night you and Matt turned up here, when you thought the Mist would turn you. You weren’t affected at all, while Matt was kinda woozy and that’s why you stayed the night.”

Eric nods, because of course he remembers. “But even then, we were out there for a really long time, Matt was holding up pretty well…”

“Honestly, all of us have had pretty good reactions to Black Mist,” Tristan interjects, absentmindedly stroking his beard. “Even Matt. None as good as you, Eric, but we’re alive and well for a reason, we needed that resistance to Mist’s effects to get to this building. It sounds weird and unlikely, but that really could mean we all have some sort of power.”

“Even when we were moving a couple of days ago, Matt was fine for a long time.” Eric hates the hope that flares up within him at the mere thought of Matt being a champion, the thought of Matt being picked up by a team… the thought of him being _alive._ “And that actually sounds pretty legit, Tristan, maybe when I’m more settled with the team I can get them to come here and see if you’re right.”

“Oh, no rush,” Greyson laughs. “Don’t worry about us. We’re thriving.”

About half an hour later, after more conversation about things like open businesses in town or what the group is fixing in this building, Tristan sees Eric to the door. “Take care of yourself,” he says, wrapping Eric up in a hug. “You know where to find us.” He almost seems perfectly calm—except for the haunted, defeated look in his eyes.

“Yeah,” replies Eric. He doesn’t know what else to say, so he stands in the doorway for a bit trying to find the right words.

“Don’t give up on him,” Tristan murmurs after a pause, lowering his head. “If anyone could survive in that situation… well, it would be you. But then it would be Matt.”

“I won’t give up,” promises Eric, and he means it. “I want to find Matt.”

His friend nods slowly and turns away, surreptitiously wiping at his eyes. Eric pretends not to notice, even though it feels like a piece of his heart is breaking. “Be safe, Eric.”

The door swings shut behind him. He takes a couple steps forward and hurls the shuriken into the air; just a second after it hits the ground, Jensen materializes right next to it.

“Ready to go?”

He inhales shakily and nods. “Yeah.”

A few seconds later, the two figures vanish together into the gloom. There is no sign that anyone had ever been there that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts:  
> \- I love Zeyzal, of course I couldn't leave him out of this story for long. IRL he's just as close with Deftly as Lico is, so I figured it would be weird to leave out any mention of our favorite EUnited rookie trio.  
> \- Actually, because I'm absolute C9 trash, all of the boys from Spring Split C9 Academy have made their appearance. Naturally, they've noticed that something's up with their own survival, there's no way they all made it by chance. Hmm... maybe they're something special as well? ;) If you're not familiar with C9A, their real names are tagged at the top.  
> \- Lico took the Jensen-Changseok thing remarkably well, but it's only going to get sadder from here. The idea I have for this might even be in the next chapter. Believe me. I specialize in angst.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments would make my day, I'd love to know what you thought of this chapter :D


	5. defiant dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys go see some members of GGS. Eric trains, trains more, and then goes on patrol, which exposes him to a couple of unfortunate situations...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: MINOR character death. ; - ;
> 
> Defiant Dance (W): Irelia charges a strike that deals more damage as she charges. She takes reduced damage during the charge.

Training starts early the next day. Eric is pulled out of bed by Andy, who allows him to get breakfast from the kitchen before leading him into the backyard.

“So here’s how it’s going to be. You’ll start with Reapered, he can help with the basics and then go from there. I think you’ll be working with him the most.”

“Wait,” Eric cuts in, because he’s already confused. “So by the basics, do you mean the knives? Or the shields? I’m guessing the knives, because Reapered has that big blade or whatever…”

“Believe it or not, the Eye of Twilight side of you has swords too,” answers Smoothie with a little laugh. “He’ll probably be more useful later for your Blade Dancer side, but for now he’ll just be getting you started in both areas. After that we’ll assess your needs and go from there.

“I know you’re confused by what I just said,” he adds when he sees the bewilderment on Eric’s face. “But trust me, Reapered will show you what it all means. Eventually. I’ll go get him now, just wait here.” With that, he goes back into the house, leaving Eric pondering his words.

 _Eye of Twilight? Swords_ and _shields?_

When he asks Reapered about it outright, the man doesn’t even directly answer his question. “You will see,” is all he says with that little grin of his, setting a long, thin box on the ground before them. “For now, you just focus. Deep breath. Still hurt?”

“No,” replies Eric. “I’m basically fine now.” Reapered makes a long _hmm_ noise under his breath.

“Close your eyes, focus,” he orders. “Think about… being strong. Anything that make you strong. Think.”

Eric does what he’s told, even though this is all a little strange. He pictures his parents first, the faces he hasn’t seen in at least a year. He has little idea if they’re safe or not, but from the information he had heard, the outlook doesn’t seem too good. Then he moves onto memories with other friends, the ones from college that weren’t lucky enough to get out when the Mist first took over—Ingyu, Hampus, Berk, and more.

 _Is that enough?_ He can’t help but feel a bit skeptical.

“Keep going,” says Reapered, suddenly sounding very far away.

Not one to disobey, Eric lets his thoughts wander back to Changseok. Jensen’s words from yesterday ring in his ears: “He said ‘take care of them, please.’”

Just the thought of Changseok faced by his own death, probably terrified out of his mind, but showing none of his fear and instead saying something like that, makes Eric’s heart ache. But he has to keep going—this is what he tells himself every time he lets himself think about what had happened to his friend.

And Matt, _oh god, Matt—I have to know what happened to Matt. I can’t just accept that he’s gone unless I see it for myself. Until then I have to assume that he’s alive and if he’s alive I can find him, I can still save him, I can—_

“Open your eyes,” comes Reapered’s voice, almost as though he’s speaking to Eric through a wall. “And look up!”

Eric opens his eyes and finds a translucent blue sphere, a barrier of some sort, around himself, separating the two of them. He looks straight up and sees a sword floating above his head. It seems to be made of some sort of blue energy, the same type as the barrier that currently surrounds him. “Is that… did I do that?” he gasps.

“Of course!” Reapered smiles at him through the barrier, the surface distorting his face a little. “That is one sword. I have other sword here”—he gestures to the now-open box at his feet—“if you want to put shield down and get it.”

“Another sword?” mutters Eric, but he carefully wills the shield to go away, and it fades into nothingness a few seconds later.

“Real sword! That one is spirit sword,” says Reapered, pointing to the floating blade. He hands Eric a silver blade that looks just like the one in the air, except it’s actually made of metal and sort of heavy. “Metal sword cut through flesh, spirit sword cut through soul. Later I teach you with knives. Your patrol start soon, next week.”

“That soon?!” Eric exclaims.

“You go with Sneaky, Smoothie. They protect you,” says Reapered with a shrug. “Nothing to worry about. Best way to learn.”

“Yeah, Eric, don’t doubt us,” calls Andy as he enters the yard. “Grab your swords. We’re going to the Golden Guardians team house.”

“Already? You give me half an hour, no?” Reapered complains (fondly).

“Hey, you never know, it might take Eric an hour to control his spirit sword,” responds Andy, laughing. He turns to Eric. “This might actually be the harder part.”

Indeed it is. He stares at the sword hovering in the air and wills it to drop… but it only moves about an inch. Five more minutes of minimal movement, and he can tell Smoothie and Reapered are barely holding back their laughter.

“Any tips?” he begs, turning to Smoothie.

“Visualize. When you just start out channeling, always visualize. It’ll get easier and faster with time and practice. Can you see the sword moving in your head?”

Eric closes his eyes again and pictures the hovering blade dropping right into his outstretched arms. He’s just opened his eyes when the sword appears before him, still floating. To Eric’s surprise, once he picks it up, it behaves just like the regular metal sword in his other hand, although rather light in comparison.

“Impressive,” says Reapered from behind him. “Now Smoothie take you to Golden Guardians.”

“What are we doing? And who is that?” asks Eric as they leave the house. The metal sword is heavy in his right hand, the spirit sword glowing and warm in his left hand.

“We’re going to get you fitted with back sheaths for your swords so you can carry them properly on patrol. And Golden Guardians is an Exploration team, a champion team. They serve other teams of champions for a price. Lourlo, the Fire Below the Mountain, mostly forges weapons. Our former Shadow Reaper Contractz is on that team, as is Matt, the Starchild that helped heal me and Sneaky after Rek’Sai attacked.”

“So there are a bunch of champion teams? Like, different types, or…?”

“Yeah. Another huge one is the Mercenary class, and those champion teams basically fight for anybody that can pay them. The biggest example of a Mercenary team is Team Liquid. Impact, our old Eye of Twilight, is part of that team now.”

“Mercenary teams will fight for _anybody?”_

“Anybody,” confirms Smoothie grimly, walking a little faster. He motions for Licorice to hurry. “It pays well. I certainly understand why they might want to do so. Anyways, the team we’re about to visit aren’t like that. They’re… good people.”

Lourlo is even friendlier than Dennis was, if that’s even possible. He opens the door with the brightest smile Eric has seen in a long time. “Welcome! Hello, Smoothie! It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, long time no see. Lourlo, this is Licorice, our new Twilight Blade. Licorice, this is Lourlo, the Fire Below the Mountain who crafted almost all of the weapons Reapered has shown you, including the steel sword you’re holding. He’s the best in town.”

Licorice starts to thank Lourlo, but gets waved off. “No, no it was the least I could do! Juan—er, Contractz has been talking about you guys lately, he really misses you. He’ll be happy to know that you’re here. I’ll go get him as soon as I can. Why don’t you go sit in the living room, and I’ll bring Licorice to the workroom?”

 

Andy takes a seat on the couch. While he waits for Juan to show up, he lets his eyes wander, because something about the house looks different from the last time he was here. It takes him a minute or two to place.

The house, normally messy, is suspiciously clean. The only things out of place are scattered bandages in one corner of the living room, wrinkled and almost hidden from view, like someone had hurriedly pushed them behind furniture. Actually, after looking around a little more, Andy finds a health potion on the coffee table in front of him, contents half-gone. The bottle’s glass surface is marked with a line of blood, smudged as though someone had tried to wipe it away.

“Andy!” shouts an excited voice. He turns to see Contractz running down the stairs. “Haven’t seen you in a while. I missed you.”

“Missed you too, Juan,” replies Smoothie, hugging his former teammate. “How have you been? Not too busy, I hope?”

“Well we’re always busy, but it’s manageable for the most part,” Juan says, shrugging. “Impact has been here more lately. It’s always with the rest of his team though, so he never really wants to talk.”

“Wait… the entirety of Team Liquid just shows up here whenever they want something?” Andy squints at Juan, who just nods solemnly. “Wow. Lourlo and Matt must _love_ that.”

Back when Team Liquid had been an Exploration team, before they switched their roster to Mercenary, Matt and Lourlo had been key parts of the team. That didn’t stop the switch from happening, though. It was quickly obvious to all who were familiar with the situation that Lourlo felt especially betrayed when he was given the boot.

“Yeah,” sighs Juan. “Sam just disappears into the workroom whenever they show up. He always comes out after they’re gone with a scowl on his face and a really detailed piece in his hand. A couple of weeks ago they had a long visit where they wanted to negotiate potion prices with Matt, and Sam came out of the workroom that night with an extremely powerful hand cannon that only holds four shots, said it would probably sell for a good price. When they showed up yesterday out of the blue we had to clean up the whole living room really fast, so he got pretty grumpy and forged the sword we just gave to Reapered. Matt isn’t nearly as bitter, although he does charge Liquid a higher price on all of his potions. I don’t think they’ve caught on yet.”

Smoothie chuckles. “Speaking of which,” he says, sitting up straighter. “You guys have been nursing someone back to health right here in this living room, haven’t you?”

Juan averts his eyes and says nothing.

“New member?” guesses Andy.

“Well, yeah… but we don’t know what he is yet, and it would be best if no one knows about him until we can figure that out,” Contractz finally answers, shooting Smoothie a meaningful look. “We were trying to keep that a secret.”

“The bandages can be explained, but the bloody health potion right here”—Andy gestures to the bottle on the table—“is a pretty big giveaway.”

“Yeah, uh, we covered that with something when Liquid was here. They don’t know. And it’s important that we keep it that way, you know?” Juan’s words are firm, but his posture is tense, his eyes betraying his nervousness. “We don’t want teams like Liquid or even TSM to find out about him. If he turns out to have a skillset they desperately want, you _know_ they would stop at nothing to obtain someone like that.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let anyone know,” Andy promises, and Juan relaxes a little. “Licorice is new too, and pretty powerful. I understand how you guys feel.”

“Thanks. And I promise, we’ll tell you eventually. It’s not that we can’t trust you,” says Contractz. He sounds tired. “Liquid is especially ruthless right now. They’re the top Mercenary team. They know how much they can get away with, and they know it’s a lot.”

“So… are the rumors true? Has Liquid really been working with—with this Prophet of the Void?”

A different voice answers, tinged with resentment. “Malzahar? Of course.” Lourlo comes walking out of the workroom with a hard look in his eyes. Licorice is right behind him, crossed swords strapped securely to his back. “You know Liquid cares first and foremost about money and power, and second about the people that might just happen to be in their way. They think Malzahar can provide them with a lot of things.”

“Malzahar?” asks Licorice, voice very small.

Samson turns to him. “The Prophet of the Void. Lots of champion teams have identified Malzahar as the entity that opened a portal here connecting the Void to the human world. He uses hallucinations to attack champions and he controls the Void creatures that have terrorized these streets.”

“You guys know this for sure?” mutters Smoothie as he and Licorice start heading towards the door. “And here I thought it was just a rumor…”

“We’ve been talking to other teams about it. Maybe we don’t know for sure, but I think there’s at least some truth to this rumor.”

It’s certainly an ominous note to end on, and it leaves Andy’s mind whirling with worries and possibilities even as he waves goodbye to his friends. Maybe Eric senses that he’s deep in thought, because despite the questions he probably has about the situation, their walk home is almost entirely silent.

* * *

Eric’s training only gets more intense from there. Reapered brings in Eric’s knives and teaches him how to control them better. He picks it up quickly enough for Reapered to be satisfied and move a bunch of training dummies into the yard a couple days later; Eric spends the rest of the week directing his blades to slice into them up close or hurling his blades at them from varying distances.

A man with a light wand and two large suitcases shows up at their door the next week. “That’s Rapidstar, our new advisor,” says Svenskeren as Reapered, beaming, brings the man into the house. “He’ll teach you how to strengthen your shield. For now, though, you’re going to spar with me. Get your sword, the actual one. Meet me in the yard.”

Dennis teaches him hand-to-hand combat, since his scythe is the closest thing anyone on the team will have to a sword. They start with wooden staffs and move to wood carvings Reapered had made of their respective weapons, which leave dull throbs of pain when they hit but aren’t actually dangerous. It doesn’t come as easily to Eric as his Blade Dancer side did, but he thrives all the same, landing more and more hits onto his teammate as the week goes on.

Smoothie hurls chains and yells tips at Eric when he doesn’t dodge fast enough; as time passes, Smoothie hits less and less hooks, which pleases both of them immensely.

Sneaky teaches Licorice how to deal damage from farther away without completely throwing out his blades. “You need to keep those on you if a Void creature is attacking, you can’t throw away your highest ranged weapons.”

Jensen comes to watch him train sometimes. Soon enough he offers to be Eric’s moving target, although Eric refuses to use his actual blades, just a bunch of sticks from the yard. Not like he can hit his target more than once or twice—he moves through the shadows too fast—but Jensen seems impressed by it anyways.

In between these sessions, he works with Rapidstar until the shields he channels can withstand light and lasers without breaking completely.

Back in the beginning, he had fretted over how quickly he could learn and fit in, but now he feels like he understands what his role is. He’s getting along well with the team, every single one of them, which is everything he could have asked for. The only thing that still troubles him is the absence of knowledge about Matt, but he has faith in his friend being alive, even if the chances are slim.

 _Everything is going to be okay,_ he thinks to himself, and actually means it.

 

At the end of the week, Sneaky and Smoothie take Eric out on patrol. “When we find a soul, you can take it with your spirit sword. Learning experience, you know?” Zach says to their new member as they depart. Eric doesn’t look scared by the prospect, thankfully.

They’re true to their word. Halfway into the night the Sentinel catches sight of someone. Zach quietly points out a shape collapsed motionless against a door in the distance. Nothing too different, but the name of the human gives him pause. “Stay back,” he advises Eric, who seems like he doesn’t want to disobey anyways. “I think they’re alive. Not sure you want to see this up close.”

He and Andy approach the body, leaving Eric standing guard on the other side of the street, his blades poised in the air around him.

“Aren’t we supposed to let him see this? To learn or whatever?” mutters Andy.

Zach shakes his head. “Not this one.” When Andy raises an eyebrow questioningly, he continues, “Remember what he said when he got home from seeing his friends? He named them. And…”

“Fuck. No, you can’t be serious,” Andy hisses, looking back to make sure Eric isn’t with them.

“I hope I’m wrong,” Zach says, even though he knows he isn’t wrong. “He named five different people, didn’t he? The ones he said could be champions? What names?”

“He mentioned a Tristan, that’s the one he was there to see. Greyson too. Keith. Who else?”

“Ray and Colin.” Sneaky sighs and motions to the body, which is facedown and dotted with plasma burns. “Well, his name matches. He doesn’t seem to be affected by Black Mist at all, which matches what Eric was saying about his friends. It was a Void kill. And you know how rare that is for regular humans. The Sentinel is never wrong. I really wish it was wrong.”

“Which one is he?” whispers Smoothie, eyes fixed upon the Sentinel floating serenely in front of him.

“Ray. Raymond Griffin. Not Misted. Just dead,” replies Sneaky, the words weighing heavily on his tongue. Eric is still keeping watch without any awareness of this happening. “He’s long gone, so the Void thing responsible for his death shouldn’t be around.”

Smoothie is silent for a few seconds. Then he shakes his head. “We can’t just keep it from him.”

“I hate it, but you’re right.”

They motion for their Twilight Blade to join them. “Something’s wrong, right?” is the first thing Licorice says when he sees the looks on their faces, and they nod. Sneaky wonders how much damage control Sven will have to do when they get home.

Slowly, gently, Smoothie turns over the body and they watch as Licorice’s eyes widen in shock, his blades clattering to the ground all around him. It takes a long time for him to find words, but when he finally does, all he can say is, “Can someone… bring him home?”

“Would you like to? Right now?”

“I don’t want to be… I don’t want to show up at Tristan’s doorstep with…” Eric shakes his head and trails off.

“I understand,” says Zach quietly. He reaches over and pats his teammate on the back before asking a cautious question. “Will you at least take his soul?”

When humans die, their souls can be parted from their body using the right tools, leaving behind just their bodies. Misted souls are different—they suffer wounds just as if they were alive, but there is no trace of the person left, just a corrupted version of who they had once been. When they die the body quickly fades, leaving nothing but a wisp of a soul and a lot of blood. They had told Eric all of this, of course.

Zach doesn’t expect Eric to agree, but that’s exactly what he does, nodding and slowly unsheathing his spirit sword from his back. As his blades rise back into place around him, he stabs the sword forward, aiming for the heart.

 

Eric expects blood, but there is no wound opened by the sword; the point of the sword simply disappears into nothingness, the whole blade briefly glowing bright blue. He slowly pulls back the sword, watching its tip reappear, and then sheathes it, accepting the sympathetic words that Sneaky offers and averting his eyes as Smoothie wraps a chain around Ray’s body and starts to head for Tristan’s place.

He hadn’t known Ray for long—everyone except for Tristan he had met only a couple of months ago—but that didn’t stop him from feeling fond of the guy and his goofy sense of humor.

He’s going to have to get used to things like this. It’s jarring, it’s terrible, it’s unfair, but it’s just how this world seems to work, and Eric can’t let this take him out.

“You okay? I can bring you home,” Sneaky murmurs.

“Yeah,” he replies, trying to keep his voice even.

Sneaky pauses. Then he shakes his head and starts leading Licorice back in the direction they came from. “Let’s go back. You don’t have to do this. We aren’t supposed to be invincible.”

Eric sighs and doesn’t protest because Zach can read him like a book.

He doesn’t cry. Of course he grieves, but this is part of his duty now, part of his life. He can’t just get rid of his responsibilities to his new team, because for whatever reason he’s particularly powerful and can help people this way. That makes this whole thing bearable—not easy, but bearable.

The team is careful around him in the coming weeks, but they don’t treat him like glass, which he appreciates. Marissa talks to him about it a little, but otherwise he deals with it the best he can and then focuses on his training, which has begun to slow down as he masters the concepts being presented to him.

He still goes on patrol exactly once per week, first with Dennis and second with Sneaky and Smoothie again. Then he goes with Reapered, who lets him take out a Misted soul in week three. They walk a set path around town, each time a little bit different. No one lets Eric go near the alleyway where it all began, however. He suspects they’re scared of him doing something stupid when they get there, and he can’t really blame them—until he knows for sure, he’s always going to keep searching, hoping that Matt is out there.

Jensen offers to be his patrol partner next. “It’s a pretty Mist-heavy night, but I’m better than all these fools, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” he says as they prepare to leave the house.

“I don’t doubt you,” Eric snorts.

He’s getting good at this. There are still techniques to learn, and heading out for patrol still feels more grim than he would like it to feel, but that’s natural. Eric twirls his blades around and thinks to himself, _I can be happy here._

* * *

Despite the abundance of Black Mist, they don’t find anyone, nor do they see anything reminiscent of Void creatures. But Jensen can’t shake the prickling unease that creeps up his spine whenever they turn a corner into thick, dark fog.

They’ve reached a startlingly familiar alleyway—the one where Jensen had driven off Rek’Sai and the team had found Licorice a month ago.

“Something up ahead,” Eric says quietly, shrinking back and crouching against a wall. His blades follow his movement, spiraling downwards until they hover just above the ground. “It’s moving. Alive, maybe?”

Jensen hears the hope in that last sentence and chooses not to address it directly. He squints towards the alleyway, but can’t see much through the Black Mist swirling before them.

“I’m not sure how you can see anything, all I see is—” he starts, and then a sharp jolt of pain travels through his head, and he doesn’t get to finish the thought. “Ah, shit,” he curses over a weird clattering noise. When he looks up, he sees that all of Eric’s blades have fallen to the ground. They’re slowly picking themselves up again, but Licorice looks just as shaken as Jensen feels right now. “You felt that?”

“Yeah,” mutters Eric. “Not sure why. Black Mist’s effects, maybe? But I think I’m fine…”

“I feel fine now too, though?” Jensen shrugs. “Not really sure. I think we’re good to keep going.”

His teammate nods and starts to creep through the fog, unsheathing his metal sword and holding it before him. The spirit sword on his back shines a pale blue-white in the darkness. Jensen follows after a cautious glance at their surroundings.

“I think it’s a human,” hisses Eric. Not even a second later he is farther ahead of Jensen, having dashed forward through the shadows.

 _It’s been months but he’s really_ still _looking for his friend,_ Jensen realizes with a sigh. He stays a good distance back and keeps an eye out for anything suspicious—if this is a trap and Eric is about to get jumped by some Void monster, he can just dart in there and try to surprise the attacker.

But there is no attacker. What they find in the alleyway is something infinitely worse.

“No…” croaks Eric. He is already trembling, his eyes wide with shock and something else—terror. “Please, no…”

Jensen tries to run forward, but finds that every attempted movement is suppressed by an invisible force. When he tries to call out a warning, he is inexplicably silenced. Further efforts cause pain to pulse through his head, building until he just can’t take it anymore and stops struggling.

Unable to speak, unable to move, he is powerless to stop the scene unfolding before him. All he can do now is watch.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot happened in this chapter. Some thoughts:  
> \- The GGS boys have some things they don't want people to know about! Or someone? Hmm.  
> \- Samson's bitterness towards TL is taken from an interview... he sounds really, really bitter. (I don't blame him.)  
> \- Sorry Wiggily... you left C9A and I had to show that somehow.  
> \- Mercenary teams aren't necessarily evil. Just more willing to do whatever it takes to get what they want.  
> \- Eric is a strong boi, he can handle the smaller losses well. And he's learning quickly. At the cliffhanger point, he knows how to fight and how to take souls; he's done both before and not been affected for too long. We'll see how much that actually helps in the next chapter, though...
> 
> Sorry if this chapter was disjointed, there was a lot of stuff I thought up that I had to get out at once.The REAL angst is coming, y'all, I promise. And the confusion. And the action. If it matters, I personally believe the next chapter contains my best writing from this entire AU.  
> Thanks for reading—I hope this isn't too confusing, if you have any questions about the AU feel free to ask :D


	6. damnation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything falls apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is relatively short, but for a reason.
> 
> Have fun reading this :-) I certainly did writing it...
> 
> Damnation (passive): Thresh can harvest the souls of enemies that die near him, permanently granting him Armor and Ability Power.

Dennis has just gotten out of the shower when Smoothie calls the team into the living room. “Just got a call from Juan,” he announces. Sneaky and Reapered noticeably perk up at his words. “He wants us to meet up with his team next week, says he’d prefer to come over to our place.”

“What the reason? Seem sudden,” Reapered says, even though a smile has appeared on his face at the news.

“They got a new member a little while ago. We’re probably going to meet him.”

“Do we know the new guy’s name?” ventures Dennis, still toweling off his hair. In an undertone, he adds the question they’re all thinking, “Is it Eric’s friend Matt?”

Andy frowns. “He didn’t tell me. But that would be ideal, wouldn’t it?”

“For Eric’s sake, I hope it is,” Zach speaks up. “Every time we took him out on patrol he would ask us what part of town we were going to. He doesn’t say it out loud, but we all know he’s been searching for Matt this whole time. We should really let him visit his friends on the other side of town, too…”

“Well, Eric and Jensen should almost be done with patrol,” Dennis replies, hiding his unease at how long it seems to be taking them to return. “And then we’ll tell them about this. Maybe he can ask Contractz himself, I don’t think the Golden Guardians would deny him an answer.”

“Yeah, I hope they’ll be back soon,” Andy sighs.

* * *

Eric stands stock-still, hardly daring to breathe, staring at the strangely solid shadow of a human—a Misted soul, one with messy dark hair and heavy-lidded eyes framed by glasses. Bright blue smoke seems to rise from the man’s skin, the vivid color reflected in his eyes and on the gleaming blade in his hand. Not human, not like this—but devastatingly recognizable all the same.

The name catches in his throat and leaves his mouth as a defeated sob. “Matt?”

Matt doesn’t speak. Of course he doesn’t speak. He’s already dead, claimed by the Black Mist. Undead, rather. Misted. And now Eric has to reap his soul.

_Why did I hold onto hope for so long?_

“I’m so sorry,” Eric manages, voice broken. “I finally found you. But… I was too late, and I’m sorry.” His hands are shaking so badly he almost drops his sword; behind him, he can feel his blades quivering too. Slowly, he readies his weapons, letting his blades rise into a deadly, bristling line above his head and raising his sword.

It has always been Eric and Matt, Matt and Eric. And it still is, he supposes, in a sick and twisted way. Eric, now a Shadow Walker, and Matt… dying.

Dead? Not yet. Not until Eric takes his soul and sets it free in the Shadow Isles.

_Why did I expect him to be alive?_

The spirit blade strapped to Eric’s back pulses gently with energy, anticipating the collection of a soul. He swallows hard and steps forward, feeling faint.

_Let him go._

So many months of hoping, so many weeks of searching, so many sleepless nights—and in the end, it has come down to this. Matt and Eric. Just like old times.

_Let him go…_

Matt’s soul remains unmoving, his face chillingly blank.

_But I can’t._

Eric lets his sword drop from his hand, his knives falling to the ground behind him with a series of loud clattering noises. “I can’t do this to you,” he gasps, reaching out for the shade of his best friend. “I can’t. I can’t… I’m sorry.” He falls to his knees with a shudder.

At the very edge of his vision he sees the shade take a step forward, its hand becoming a blur of blue and silver. Only pure instinct saves him, his will to live momentarily overpowering his grief and guilt as he dives to one side, his six knives mirroring the movement behind him jerkily. The blade that had been aimed at his neck only finds air.

The phantom version of Matt does not stop. It walks towards him as though sleepwalking, or perhaps moving through deep water. The knife is still held firmly in his right hand.

“No… please don’t make me do this,” Eric pleads, standing shakily once more and backing up further into the alleyway. He looks for Jensen, but his teammate has seemingly vanished—and all the while, Matt’s soul continues to advance towards him with that terrible vacant look in his eyes.

“Matt, please… please stop…”

But there is nothing left of Matt for his words to appeal to. There is nothing left of the trusting boy that Eric had pulled along by the hand as tendrils of Black Mist chased them away from the ruins of their school, the shades of their friends. There is nothing left of the determined man who had come into the living room the day after Changseok’s disappearance, feigning complete composure, and held Eric while he fell apart and cried himself to sleep. There is nothing left of his smile or his sincerity or his spirit. There is truly nothing left of Eric’s best friend.

Now Eric, standing in the middle of the alley with his blades floating on either side of him, finds that his eyes are swimming with hot tears; when he blinks they cascade freely down his cheeks. Matt is still moving as slowly as ever, but he is closer now, almost close enough to stab his knife through Eric’s body.

“Please, Matt, it’s me,” he tries again, but he already knows just by looking at Matt’s Misted face, devoid of any human emotion, that he would not hesitate.

Still he waits, the tears falling faster and faster, memories flashing endlessly through his mind—trying to cook together, walking to their workplace side by side, falling asleep next to each other every night after the loss of Changseok.

None of that matters anymore. It just _can’t_ matter anymore, because Matt is standing right in front of him now, his face showing no trace of human feeling. His hand, still holding that knife, pulls back.

Eric cannot wait any longer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers shakily. And then, hating himself more than anything, he unleashes his blades with a wretched scream.

 

Behind him, Jensen feels his debilitating headache lessen, the movement suppression and the forced silence fading away just enough for him to break free entirely. He rushes forward, wishing he could take this soul instead, wishing he could take away some of Eric’s pain.

But the damage is done.

 

He breaks. He breaks into so many pieces in that moment that he can’t even start to think about putting himself together again. He breaks and lets go of his blades, throws himself to the ground and sobs uncontrollably as they whirl and dance around him, ripping into the soul they have been ordered to attack.

All Eric wants is to rip himself into pieces instead. He is a monster, and Matt’s blood will be on his hands forever.

“Misted souls don’t go cleanly,” Jensen told him once, after a particularly grueling training session in which Eric had asked him haltingly about how it would feel to take his first soul. “They bleed and then they break. Before they go they leave fading bodies, remnants of the people they once were. I usually don’t have trouble with it, because I don’t know these people, because at this point they’re usually trying to kill me, and because their forms eventually melt away. Though the blood is always a little harder to stomach with the more persistent attackers, because that doesn’t fade—it soaks in and has to be washed out.”

When Eric tries to stand his knees buckle and so he just crawls to Matt’s crumpled, mutilated form. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and traces a trembling hand over his best friend’s blood-stained cheek, adjusts the broken glasses on his nose. “I’m so sorry…”

Matt’s brown eyes are wide open and glassy; his skin is ice-cold to the touch, the blue smoke from earlier nowhere to be found. Eric carefully slides Matt’s eyelids closed, then clutches his body and cries until he can hardly breathe.

It seems like an eternity passes this way before someone gently pulls him away. “Eric,” mutters Jensen. He sounds chillingly calm, almost detached from the situation, and yet his hands shiver on Eric’s shoulders. “Eric… he’s gone.”

Sure enough, Matt’s body is fading away beneath his fingertips, becoming wispier and less distinct with every second that passes. Another moment passes and Matt is gone in a bright flash of violet light. Eric instinctively unsheathes his spirit sword and prepares to collect his soul, except—

Jensen swears under his breath. “Am I dreaming? Or did he not have a soul?”

“No,” Eric sobs. “No, don’t say that. It can’t be.”

 _No, it can’t be—_ but it is. Jensen is right. All that remains of Matt now is blood, splattered across Eric’s clothing and coating his knives in horrible crimson. Matt’s soul is nowhere to be found and it’s all Eric’s fault. No soul. Nothing to collect and send down to the Shadow Isles. No form of peace or passage.

He is a monster, and he has never hated himself more than he does right now.

“Go home, Jensen,” Eric says after a while, looking up at him from his position on the ground. There are still tears running endlessly down his face, but his heart is sickeningly numb, his voice eerily emotionless. “Please. Go.”

“I can’t just leave you here—”

“Please,” he begs, a note of desperation coloring his voice now. That word has been in his mouth so much tonight that it’s starting to feel like a broken cry for help instead of a word. “Jensen, please.”

Jensen is clearly reluctant, but obeys after a few more seconds, slinking off into the shadows and quickly vanishing. Eric is left alone in this same alleyway, wishing he could be swallowed up and burned away by the Black Mist that surrounds him. Instead it embraces him like an old friend, not allowing him to die within its clutches. He falls back against the wall and buries his face in his hands.

He is a monster, and he will never forgive himself for it.

* * *

Nicolaj comes back alone and trembling, and Zach can see the fear on everyone’s faces plain as day. Everyone is assuming the worst.

“Where’s Eric?” asks Andy.

He barks out a laugh that turns quickly into rapid breathing and choked gasps. Dennis is the first and only one to react, quickly pulling him into a hug and shooting Zach a look of panic over Jensen’s shoulder.

This doesn’t happen often. At least, not anymore. Jensen hasn’t looked so shaken in a very long time. The last time Sneaky had seen him like this, it was back before Sven had joined, under the stress of Smoothie’s possible demise. Andy had taken a knife to the stomach as he leaped forward to lock down an especially resistant target, and that almost triggered a panic attack from Nicolaj. Luckily Impact had begun channeling his Stand United almost at the moment the blade pierced skin, and so the actual damage was mitigated while he teleported to Andy’s side to protect him from further harm and finish locking down the kill. A couple of health potions were enough to keep him alive until a Starchild could arrive to heal his wounds.

They went on patrol as a 5-man unit for weeks after that.

_“Where is Eric?”_

Smoothie repeats his question more forcefully, bringing Sneaky back to the present. A few tense moments pass before Jensen replies, words muted by Sven’s shirt: “Well, he’s alive.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Zach asks warily, but gets no answer.

“I go find him.” Reapered turns and walks from the room without another word.

Dennis, looking worried, leads Jensen back to his bedroom. He returns later with his tear-soaked shirt, retakes his seat on the couch, and stares out the nearest window. And they wait.

At least twenty tense minutes pass before they hear footsteps at the doorstep. Zach watches wordlessly as Eric stumbles through the doorway, face stark white and eyes red-rimmed. His hands, knives, and shirt are splattered with crimson. Only a few steps into the room his legs just give out and he sits down heavily on the floor. Andy leaps to his feet immediately, attempting to figure out what’s wrong, but some part of Zach already knows.

Everything about their youngest member is terrifyingly still. The blades that normally hover in a graceful arc behind him have instead fallen in a bloodstained heap to one side; the steel sword strapped to his back is completely clean outside of a red-smudged handle, however. His hands, drenched in scarlet, lie motionless in his lap. Andy is attempting to ask him questions, but Eric is completely mute, glassy eyes staring fixedly at nothing as though there is something only he can see.

Reapered enters the room behind Eric and places a hand on the handle of his still-sheathed spirit blade. “No soul?” he asks after a pause, sounding confused. “So much blood. But no soul?”

Zach briefly squeezes his eyes shut. So despite all of the gore covering Licorice, there is no soul collected in his spirit sword? How is that even possible? What did he even kill— _who_ did he even kill for there to be this much blood?

“Eric…” Andy’s voice wavers, and suddenly he just sounds so _tired._ Zach kind of wants to go give him a sympathetic pat on the back, but he doesn’t dare move, rooted in place by the gravity of the situation. “Eric, please, tell me what’s wrong, please…”

Several more seconds pass without any acknowledgement of his words, and Andy is just beginning to turn away in defeat when Eric’s eyes snap to him and he says, very quietly, “It was him. It was Matt.”

_I thought we assumed the worst, but this is almost as bad._

Andy freezes in his spot and mutters a curse under his breath. Dennis just looks confused until it all dawns on him at once and his eyes widen in horror. Reapered lowers his head and says nothing. Zach feels his heart sink, his earlier fear now realized, but he tries to keep his expression carefully blank as he rises from his seat and approaches the unmoving boy on the floor.

“Come on,” he murmurs, slinging an arm over Eric’s back and helping him up. Dimly he wonders if his own hands are shaking. Their youngest obeys without even a hint of resistance. “Let’s go clean you up.”

Eric says nothing more, not when Zach pulls his hands into the sink and turns on the water, not when it takes three rounds of soap to wash the last traces of red from his hands. He doesn’t even make a sound when Zach gently pushes him towards the bathtub and turns the water on. It is not until Sneaky has left the room that their youngest lets desperate, muffled sobs wrench themselves free, echoing ominously in the enclosed space and causing the rest of the house to lapse into an uneasy, gloomy silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thought:  
> \- Descriptions are important. Oh, and if this made you really sad, I’ve done my job.
> 
> Thanks for reading, guys. I really appreciate it. Please yell at me.


	7. malefic visions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't get better. Yet.
> 
> (Contractz does business with Impact.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Malefic Visions (E): Malzahar infects his target's mind with cruel visions of their demise, dealing damage over time. Using Malzahar's other spells on the target will refresh the visions.  
> If the target dies while afflicted by the visions, they pass on to a nearby enemy unit and Malzahar gains Mana. Malzahar's Voidlings are attracted to affected units.

Jensen and Eric are both sick. Normally this would be one giant coincidence and someone would just tell Marissa so she could go get them some medicine, but not this time. Not after what had happened last night.

Dennis checks on Jensen in the early morning and finds him coughing and shivering, swaddled in all of his blankets and complaining of a terrible headache. “Just rest,” he tells Jensen when the other man tries to ask some sort of muffled question involving Eric’s name. “You need strength.”

Meanwhile Andy goes with him to check on Eric, but before they even open the door he hears a faint noise of pain from within. “What the fuck,” Andy croaks, placing his head in his hands. Dennis shakes his head.

“This isn’t bad luck,” he mutters. “Someone is after us.”

They spend the rest of the day taking care of their teammates. Jensen complains a little more than Eric, who either sleeps a lot or mumbles half-hearted answers to their questions (“Do you need anything? Does it hurt here or there? How do you feel now?”), but that’s not really surprising to Dennis, considering what Eric had to do last night.

He sighs to himself. He hates it. No one should ever have to deal with what Eric has been dealing with. In the span of a month, he’s almost died, watched his best friend be torn away from him, stumbled upon the body of a different friend, and now must feel responsible for the soulless death of said best friend. 

And that’s the problem. Humans rarely leave no soul when they die. The only reason a human wouldn’t leave one is if their body never held a soul in the first place, or if their method of death was violent enough to disintegrate the soul immediately. They can’t even tell Eric that the absence of Matt’s soul  _ isn’t _ his fault, because it really could be.

Around midnight Sven gets water from the kitchen and makes his way to Eric’s room. He’s about to enter when he hears Sneaky’s voice coming from within and stops at the doorway, waiting with bated breath.

“Why didn’t Jensen do it instead?”

After a long silence, Dennis hears Eric’s feeble voice: “I didn’t think about that. I don’t know… I don’t know where he went. Jensen wouldn’t just abandon me. Something must have happened.”

Sven makes sure to ask Jensen about it a few minutes later while forcing him to drink some water. “I couldn’t do anything,” Jensen mutters, voice hoarse. He’s not looking at Sven. “I wanted to do something. But there was some sort of force preventing me from moving. From speaking, even. I’ve never felt anything that strong before.”

He laughs shakily, and Dennis can see all too clearly the shame and guilt written all over his face. “Then there was nothing you could do,” he says, trying to be reassuring, trying to ignore his own frustration and doubt that threatens to spill over. “You’re not weak. It seems like it was planned as a trap, and you can’t beat yourself up over it.” He pauses and looks for different words to use. “There’s no time for that. We’ve got to help Eric through this instead, you know?”

Jensen finally meets his eyes with a nod. “Okay,” he whispers.

* * *

Andy wakes in the middle of the night to someone screaming, a drawn-out cry of unbelievable pain and loss. At first he thinks that he had somehow summoned his lantern while asleep, because that sounds remarkably similar to what he hears at the end of successful patrol nights—the screeches of trapped souls waiting to go to the Shadow Isles. But he hasn’t summoned his lantern. The room is dark.

That can only mean one thing.

The cry dies out; he rubs his eyes and sits up. Dealing with this is going to suck. A lot. But he can’t allow his teammate to suffer alone. Something must be done.

Slowly, quietly, Andy rises from his bed, treading as lightly as he can—if anyone slept through that noise, he wouldn’t want to be the one to wake them now—and heads for the room right next door. 

The air is freezing cold in Eric’s room. Andy checks the thermostat next to the light switch and finds that the temperature is set to normal. 

“Shit,” he mumbles. Eric’s body must be absorbing all of the room’s heat. His Energy levels are probably completely messed up.

Sure enough, he is suffering—thrashing in his bed, face pale, forehead slicked with sweat, fingers clenched so hard on the edge of his sheets that they are white. Alarmed, Andy reaches for Eric’s hands, intending to pull his fingers free, but before he even gets there, a wickedly curved blade comes flying out of nowhere and narrowly misses his left ear.

Andy drops to the floor with an involuntary yelp, heart pounding. As he watches in fascinated horror, five more knives float slowly out from under the bed. Some are quivering as though they are struggling to stay in the air; others bob up and down slightly as though they are swimming in calm water.

All of them are heading directly for Smoothie’s face. He dives for the closet and slams the door shut, just in time for the blades to thud, one by one, into the wood. One actually pierces the door and sticks through only a few inches from his nose.

“Fuck,” he pants, struggling to summon his lantern in the gloom. It feels a little bit better to have that in his hands again, but how the fuck is he supposed to fix this? Even if he wants to call someone else to help, no one else heard Eric cry out earlier, so who can hear him shouting from within this closet?

He’s going to have to fight this carefully. Eric’s blades are hard to defend against when even slightly uncontrolled and positively lethal when completely out of control.

There is a single chain attached to his lantern currently. He would like there to be more than one for him to use, but anything is better than nothing for now. Gritting his teeth, he gets slowly to his feet, lantern gripped firmly in his left hand, chain wound up with his right, and then he pulls the door open. 

Immediately three of the knives pull themselves free and hurl themselves at him once more. Andy ducks and lashes out in front of himself with his chain, knocking away the two knives that he didn’t dodge. As he tries to repeat this with the next three, he feels one slice into his right arm and flattens himself against the ground to check on the wound. Fortunately the cut looks shallow enough to be healed by his lantern, so he straightens up and continues inching towards the bed.

The knives make a renewed rush; he slides below the weapons, heads straight for Eric’s bedside and shakes gently at his teammate’s shoulders. “Eric?” When he gets no response he rolls aside to avoid a flying blade and then tries again more vigorously. “Please, Eric—”

Eric’s eyes open, bleary and unfocused, and a moment later his spirit sword materializes, floating above them in midair. Another moment, and a protective zone of blue Energy appears around them, blocking out any of the blades that still fly about and sending them clattering to the floor, where they lie without any more threat.

“Eric…” Smoothie sighs, hauling his lantern up to the nightstand and looking mournfully downward as the protective Energy dissolves. “Eric, what’s happening to you?”

Their Twilight Blade gives no response, although his eyes remain wide open, fixed upon something Andy cannot see. Under the ghastly greenish light that surrounds them, he looks more specter than human.

“Licorice?” tries Andy, desperation beginning to take over. “Eric? Please…” There’s a lump in his throat and his eyes are stinging, but he swallows hard and blinks a couple of times to keep his composure. He can’t break down right now.

Eric’s eyes close once more. “Matthew?” he whimpers. His voice is so faint. “Matt?”

Andy’s heart breaks a little. “No… not Matt,” he whispers, forcing a weak smile. “Smoothie. Andy. You know me.”

“My blades are going crazy. I can feel them. I hurt you, didn’t I?” Eric raises a shaking hand, one lone tear running down his cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m hurting everyone.”

“It’s okay, nothing major.” Andy grips his teammate’s outstretched hand and tries to keep the tears from welling up in his own eyes. “You’re not hurting everyone, Eric. You’re doing your best and it’s all going to be okay.”

No answer—their newest member has returned to his dark and troubled dreamland. Andy drops Eric’s hand, leaves the room, and quietly closes the door.

* * *

They’re sitting on the couch in the Golden Guardians’ team house. Business as usual. Juan kind of wishes he could meet up with Impact under friendlier, more comfortable circumstances, but he supposes the rest of Liquid not being here is already good enough.

“So how has business been for you lately?” he asks cautiously.

Impact shrugs, halfway into counting out money for a new batch of Elixir of Sorcery, which Matt had recently brewed. “Not bad,” he answers. Then he grins. “Is pretty good, actually. Eugene got big job last week. Easy.” 

“Really? From where? And what was Pobelter doing?” Juan continues to pack elixir bottles into a box, trying to keep himself from sounding too interested.

(But he is. Pobelter is a Deceiver, specializing in clones and deadly magic in order to help clients fool their enemies and get away with it. Team Liquid is most likely working with Malzahar. There are a lot of things that he’d like to know here.)

There’s a few beats of silence; Contractz looks up and finds his former teammate squinting at him. “Or, uh, you really don’t have to tell me,” he quickly amends, cursing his own inability to lie.

Impact lowers his head and still says nothing. Then his head jerks back up and he says, sudden, “I know what you are thinking, Juan.” The words seem weird and sudden, jolting. Before Contractz can even think of a reply, Impact plows on. “You hear rumor, we are working with Malzahar, yes?”

Wordlessly, Juan nods. Eonyoung pauses.

“Don’t think bad things, Juan,” he finally mutters. “I tell you, because I trust you. The client order clone of someone we not seen before. No one know why.”

“How did Pobelter make this clone then?” ventures Contractz meekly, placing the lid on the box of potions he had been packing.

“Exact directions client give by mind,” replies Impact, shrugging. “You can tell now, right? Client is Malzahar. You right. But can you tell me? Do you know?”

“Know what?”

“Cloud9 has new member, no? Replace me? Who is he?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Contractz replies, relieved that it isn’t really a lie.

Clearly Impact does not believe him, but he doesn’t complain, just hands over the money and pats Contractz on the back with a little smile. “Okay. Good to see you, Juan.” And then he walks out with the potion box, leaving Juan’s thoughts whirling in his wake.

* * *

Jensen quickly recovers and seems for the most part fine (although he’s still rather withdrawn and moody, even when Dennis tries to talk to him). But Eric… Eric isn’t getting better. In fact, he’s only getting worse, no matter what they do. His coughing fits get more frequent, his headaches get more intense—he starts to hallucinate regularly, calling out weakly to someone that isn’t there. 

They hate to see him in so much pain, but nothing they’re doing is working. They can’t even call Matt, the Starchild from Golden Guardians, because he’s out of town. 

Zach can tell that it's beginning to take a toll on the rest of the team. Everyone looks about ready to break down. Everyone feels completely helpless. 

A few days after that fateful patrol, Eric simply doesn’t wake up.

Sneaky wakes early that morning not to an alarm, not to the calls of a teammate, but to intense distress and a lingering, prickling fear through his and Smoothie’s Oathsworn bond. He’s on his feet immediately—if Smoothie could be cut by one of Licorice’s knives a few nights ago without the bond ever letting him know, then this has to be much worse. Something has to be terribly wrong.

He rushes for Andy’s room; halfway down the stairs he sees Eric’s door is open and heads there instead. Andy is kneeling at their teammate’s bedside with a look of complete and utter defeat on his face.

“He won’t wake up,” he gasps before Zach can even say anything. His voice is shaky; he is clearly on the verge of tears. “I wanted to check on him again and—and he’s just—he’s not responding to anything—”

Eric is breathing normally, his heartbeat steady, but something is clearly not right. Sneaky closes his eyes, pushing back his own panic, and pulls Smoothie into a hug. The other man is crying in earnest now, body quivering. This is a sight that Sneaky has not seen in a while—Smoothie always tries to be so strong. “We’re going to fix this,” Sneaky promises as he lets go, and hopes with every fiber of his being that he is right. “Get the others. I’m going to figure out what the issue is.”

As Andy hurries out of the room, Sneaky summons his Sentinel, allowing it to materialize before him. Ever so slowly, he wills it towards their youngest member, who lies motionless in his bed.

_ Eric Ritchie. Male, twenty years old. The Twilight Blade. _

_ Pain, grief, terror, guilt. Pain. Grief. Pain. _

A pause in the flow of information while the Sentinel probes deeper. Then the bomb drops, and Sneaky’s breath catches in his throat as he realizes what’s happening.

_ Afflicted with Malefic Visions. _

“Malzahar,” Sneaky whispers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts:  
> \- Surprise surprise, Malzahar has to do with all of this tragedy! Our boys don't know exactly what's happening just yet, but they know they'll be in for a ride D:  
> \- I really see Sneaky and Sven as emotional rocks. Sneaky seems like he wouldn't be fazed by much but also wouldn't really reach out until he really has to, and Sven seems like he's a bit more likely to reach out but also probably a BIT more affected by things. I don't know, maybe it's just me. IRL I'd add Lico to this list as well, but in this AU that's obviously not the case.  
> \- Gauntlet was probably the happiest day of the year for me, I'm so glad Cloud9 were able to come out on top once more! So, in celebration, I, uh... I wrote angst and suffering??? (And burned a hole through my wallet, but that's okay.)  
> \- To anyone reading: how do YOU think the team is going to fix this? I'd like to know what you think will happen! Who do you think will step up? What abilities (hint: ultimates) will be important? And most importantly... will it actually work? 
> 
> Thanks for reading~! :D And you can find me on twitter @luxsideris !!!


	8. umbral trespass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jenskeren have an argument. Then Dennis does everything he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Umbral Trespass (R): Kayn hides in an enemy's body, dealing massive damage when he bursts out.

“So you’re saying he’s been trapped inside his own mind,” says Dennis flatly.

They’re sitting on the floor of Eric’s room, every single one of them, watching sadly over their unconscious teammate. Marissa is on her way, but Zach knows this mess is out of her control.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Jensen replies. The words seem oddly forceful, as though there’s some more meaning behind them. Knowing Jensen, he’s probably trying to make a point. Zach makes a mental note to ask him about it later. “He isn’t nearly as strong as we are. Like, the power is there, but he hasn’t had the time to develop that power that we have. So he would fall victim to Malzahar’s Malefic Visions more easily.”

“But why us? And what are we going to do?” asks Andy dully. No one seems to have an answer. The room lapses back into uncomfortable silence, save for Reapered and Rapidstar exchanging a few brief words in their native language every once in a while. Sven has his head down and doesn’t raise it for a while.

“Sven,” Reapered speaks up after a while, and all eyes turn to him. “Sven, your ultimate…?”

“Yes, the Shadow Reaper’s ultimate ability,” drawls Jensen, lip curling when Svenskeren doesn’t even look up. “Weren’t we talking about that before we came in here?”

The tension between Dennis and Nicolaj is definitely not something Zach was expecting when he called everyone into the room, but the idea is intriguing. “You’re saying Umbral Trespass?”

“Yes, I don’t know how I don’t think of this earlier.” Reapered cracks a weak smile. “Sven, what do you think…?”

He trails off as Sven abruptly stands and leaves the room, the door shutting behind him with surprising force. The moment the door closes, Reapered whirls on Jensen. “Jensen? What happen? You fucked up?”

“What did I do?” Jensen’s jaw is tight, his eyes narrowed. “It’s not my fault he’s being—” 

Zach gives him a sharp nudge from behind to shut him up.  _ “Jensen.” _

“...Okay, well, you all know what the ultimate ability of a Shadow Reaper is. Umbral Trespass. Dennis can go into Eric’s mind and figure out just what’s going on. He can fix the problem! But when I talked to him, he didn’t seem to think the idea was all that great.” Jensen scoffs, clearly disgruntled.

“Not that easy. Go talk,” says Rapidstar from the corner, and motions to the door, which Jensen heads for with a sigh of annoyance.

 

Jensen finds Dennis staring out of his bedroom window and immediately demands to know what’s making the decision so hard.

“It’s called Umbral  _ Trespass _ for a reason, Nicolaj,” Dennis mutters. His words are coming out more bitter than he’d like them to, but right now he’s just tired of worrying about Jensen’s feelings with every word he says. “I said it before, but I’ll say it again: I see things that are too deeply personal for this to be taken lightly. Too private. The few times I’ve done this I’ve regretted it afterwards.”

“And?” Jensen cocks his head. His voice has taken on a nasty edge, which Sven finds a bit unfair. “Eric is trapped in his own mind. Don’t you want to help him?”

“Of course I want to!” Dennis rubs his forehead, his accent thickening. It’s not like him to get riled up and argue with his teammates, but it’s frustrating that Jensen isn’t even  _ trying _ to understand. “You know that isn’t what I meant.”

“What I know is that he’s suffering and you’re the only one that can do something about it!” Jensen’s lip curls, his speech only growing more impatient. “So why aren’t you?”

“The only one?” Dennis places one hand against the glass. “This is really the only option?” Without waiting for an answer he turns to face his teammate. “I utilized Umbral Trespass to enter a human’s mind last year, while I was still on TSM. All I could feel was pain. Pain, and fear. And it was overwhelming. I didn’t even know their name or any of the people in their memories and thoughts. How can I do something so invasive to him? How can I sift through the mind of someone actually dear to me, even for a single second?”

Jensen sighs, closing his eyes and leaning back against the wall. His frustration seems to have faded a bit. “Dennis, this really is the only way. If I could do what you can I’d gladly take over, you know I would! But that’s not how it works.

“There’s no time for that,” he continues, making his way towards the door. “We’ve got to help Eric through this instead, you know.” Dennis winces because those are his own words being thrown back into his face. The door slams shut. 

He swears under his breath and closes his eyes. Well, he knows what he has to do, and he knows that he’s going to end up doing it, even if it risks his own health in multiple ways, because he can’t just sit to one side and watch his teammate get weaker and weaker. He’s known that this whole time, known that he would be entering Eric’s mind eventually through Umbral Trespass, no matter how much he hates having to do so.

The scythe in his hand shivers, and the metal grows ice-cold against his skin for the first time in years. His decision has been made.

_ Forgive me, _ he thinks solemnly, and rises to head back to the rest of his team.

 

Svenskeren returns to Licorice’s room with a look of complete and utter defeat on his face, and they know he’s given in. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. They all knew Sven would have given in anyways—the man is simply too good of a person to let anybody remain hurt for too long, even if the process of helping his teammate will surely hurt him. What they didn’t expect was for Sven to give in so quickly.

“If I get trapped in with Eric during this whole thing, Jensen is in charge of letting my girlfriend know,” is all Sven says, which gets a few chuckles.

“Yeah, I can do that,” replies Jensen, tone markedly nicer than before.

Umbral Trespass is a notoriously difficult and rather dangerous process. Dennis will enter Eric’s mind, whatever kind of hallucinatory hellscape it might be in his current state, and walk through many of his memories. The end goal is to find whatever is hurting him and fight it back, or to reach out to Eric from within his mind and coax him back to the present. Maybe both. 

They watch him pull energy from his scythe slowly, carefully. Shivering threads of dark blue wrap around his entire arm, fizzling as they hit his skin. He exhales heavily, and then the blade glows bright blue, just like Eric’s spirit sword had. It is immaterial now, and will do no physical harm.

As the entire team looks on, their hope and trepidation palpable, he grits his teeth and swings the scythe straight into Eric’s chest. The moment the blade makes contact, Dennis’s eyes roll back into his head and he slumps back into Andy’s waiting arms, his weapon clattering to the floor beside him.

* * *

Dennis opens his eyes into swirling Mist. His head is pounding so badly with present-day Eric’s pain and fear that it takes him a couple of seconds before he can gather enough strength to get up. When he looks down at himself, he sees that his form is basically translucent—he is literally a walking shadow, as though he’s activated his Shadow Step ability permanently—and that his scythe is nowhere to be seen.

“I’m here,” he hears, a startlingly familiar voice that echoes as though he’s standing in an enclosed space. “Matt?” It’s Eric, and he sounds absolutely frantic.

“Over here!” comes a different voice from Dennis’s left, and barely two seconds later a young man with messy black hair and clouded glasses sprints past with a large backpack slung haphazardly over his shoulder. “Eric!” 

Dennis follows them, moving as fast as he can through the continuous throbbing pains in his head. This must be a memory Eric has of fleeing their school. Now if he could just keep up with them…

Eric and Matt are fast. They’re running for their lives. Try as he might, he can’t quite catch up to them, and after a few minutes of running he’s forced to watch their forms become obscured by thick Black Mist. “Fuck,” he pants, breathless and disappointed, but freezes when the Mist before him parts to reveal a whole different scene. 

He’s standing in an apartment building. It is small and cramped and somewhat messy. Matt and Eric are sitting on a worn couch, speaking in quiet voices. They don’t notice Dennis when he takes a seat on a creaky chair nearby (which is relieving, since that’s how his ultimate ability is supposed to work).

Before Dennis can actually get any information, however, someone bangs on the door loudly, startling the two of them out of their conversation. They exchange terrified looks.

_ They’ve been expecting a visitor, _ Dennis realizes.  _ More like dreading that visitor, actually… _

“Hey!” yells a rough male voice from outside. “Is Changseok in there?”

“Landlord,” mutters Matt, face white. 

They scramble for the door. The landlord squints at them. “You’re not Lee Changseok, are ya.”

“No, we’re…we’re his friends.” Eric’s voice is surprisingly firm, and Dennis feels a sudden surge of pride for his teammate. “I’m sorry, but Changseok… he’s gone.”

“Whaddaya mean?” Landlord is squinting even more now. “Gone?”

“Taken,” Matt offers, voice very small, teeth worrying at his own bottom lip. “By something out there.” This is where Dennis sees them both blinking back tears, looking in opposite directions as if trying not to let the other know, and he has to look away himself.

“Ah… oh.” A sigh from the landlord. “Condolences, condolences. Well, that’s a real shame, but it you can’t cough up the rent money in his stead, I’m afraid…”

His voice gets more distant because he’s already walking away, leaving the rest of his sentence unspoken. The moment he disappears from their sight, Matt throws himself onto the couch with a dry sob. Eric shuts the door, takes a seat next to him, and then starts to cry softly.

Dennis gets up and walks to the door, the headache that he had kind of forgotten about intensifying once more. There is no way he watches this without having a breakdown of his own. The sooner he gets to the root of the problem, the better, anyway. His last sight from this particular memory is of the two friends holding onto each other like lifelines, as though they had nothing else left in the world. And perhaps that was the case. It is not something he will easily forget.

What he expects to see next is the night of their separation, the fateful night where Matt was whisked away by Kha’Zix while Eric lay bleeding out in the alleyway. But that isn’t what he gets. Instead he walks into a recent memory, one that is possibly even worse: Jensen and Eric setting off on patrol together.

Eric looks content. He looks  _ happy. _ It’s a terrible sight for Dennis, who follows closely as they walk out the front door, because he knows how the night will end—with Eric shattered almost beyond repair. Sure, he doesn’t know exactly what happened, and that’s what he’s here to find out, but it must have been pretty brutal, considering the result.

Even as he moves along behind them, noting how easily they talk and laugh at the beginning of this patrol night, the ending is all he can think about. Jensen had spent the better part of a half-hour shaking in his embrace and repeating the same heartbreaking phrase over and over again: “It’s all my fault.” Smoothie had thrown himself headfirst into taking care of Eric, a worrying return to a bad habit (he always tended to overwork himself in times of stress, perhaps to avoid dealing with the source of it). Sneaky didn’t speak another word for the rest of the night, instead spending a long time sitting in Jensen’s room doing god-knows-what… probably just watching him sleep. Reapered had retreated to a corner and shed tears—a sight Sven didn’t think he’d ever seen before from their nonchalant coach. And Licorice… he came home haunted and broken, covered in the blood of the best friend he had wanted so badly to save. Just the recollection makes Svenskeren shudder.  _ That’s _ why he’s here. If he can’t accomplish his mission, then not only has Matt died for nothing, it also means that Malzahar has basically succeeded in killing Eric along with him.

He’s jolted out of his grim musings by Jensen and Eric stopping and moving into the shadows. In front of them lies a very familiar alley; a vaguely humanoid shape is standing there, silhouetted against the fog.

_ This must be where it all happened. _

“Something up ahead. It’s moving. Alive, maybe?” Eric sounds so hopeful. Dennis sighs.

Jensen squints in the direction of the alleyway. “I’m not sure how you can see anything, all I see is—”

Suddenly pain surges through Dennis’s body, forcing him to his knees, an involuntary gasp of pain escaping his lips. He can hear Jensen cursing and Licorice’s blades falling to the ground in a series of loud clatters.

“You felt that?”

“Yeah. Not sure why. Black Mist’s effects, maybe? But I think I’m fine…”

_ It isn’t Black Mist. It’s Malzahar,  _ Dennis realizes.  _ This is the exact point that Malzahar somehow infects  _ both of them _ with Malefic Visions. But… how? _

They’re moving now, inching towards the shadowy figure, and he follows them. “I think it’s a human,” Eric hisses, and then he’s off, moving with barely contained anticipation while Jensen sighs and hangs back. Dennis almost can’t stand to watch, but he makes himself enter the alley, taking a spot halfway between them and bracing himself for what is soon to occur.

What happens next is not nearly as dramatic as Sven expects, and yet it’s so much worse. Eric recognizes Matt, and the very sight of his best friend’s undead soul seems to steal the life straight from Eric’s own. Behind them, Jensen’s eyes have gone wide, his limbs straining fruitlessly against invisible chains. And this entire time, Sven has found it harder and harder to keep himself upright. “Fuck,” he chokes out, wincing as the pain continues to build up in his head. “Fuck—!”

Eric is apologizing over and over again, his sword falling from his hands, but his blades are already in position. Just seeing him like this hurts Dennis more than anything else. But of course Eric can’t bring himself to do it, letting his knives fall and reaching out to Matt. Even the knowledge that Eric will come home alive doesn’t stop Dennis from calling out a warning when the Misted soul swings a knife in his direction.

“No… please don’t make me do this…” Eric is pleading now, backing away from the advancing soul with tears running down his cheeks. “Matt, please… please stop…”

There are tears welling up in Dennis’s own eyes, but he blinks them back.

“Please, Matt, it’s me.” He sounds weak and lost now, defeated. There is silence as Matt takes another step forward. Then Eric whispers an apology, his blades fly through the air, and Dennis is hit by a wave of pain so strong he nearly passes out.

It takes a minute for him to come to his senses; by the time he can stand up again, Eric is crawling towards Matt’s broken body. He traces a shaking hand over Matt’s bloodied cheek, reaches up to adjust his glasses, whispers something in his ear, and then slowly slides his eyelids closed. If not for the ugly wounds and smears of blood everywhere, Matt almost looks like he could be sleeping. Eric takes another look at his best friend’s lifeless face and finally,  _ finally _ breaks down, collapsing and holding onto Matt’s body as though it’s the last thing anchoring him to the face of the earth.

Sven doesn’t realize he’s crying until he raises a hand to his face and finds it wet with tears. 

Now Jensen is moving again. Dennis sees him move forward, his face blank with shock, and pull Eric back just as Matt’s body begins to fade away. Their youngest is seemingly moving on autopilot now, unsheathing his spirit sword, but Dennis again knows what’s coming before Jensen even says it. 

“Fuck… am I dreaming? Or did he not have a soul?”

A moment while Eric processes it, and then he sobs. “No. No, don’t say that. It can’t be.” But he clearly knows Jensen is right—Dennis can see it written all over his face.

The minutes pass by quickly. Eric is crying and can’t seem to stop, which is understandable. Jensen stands there shaking and doesn’t leave until Eric makes him go. And then it is just Eric, falling against the nearest wall and covering his face, weeping and alone up until Reapered shows up and leads him away without any questions asked. Dennis is about to follow when Black Mist envelops him suddenly, as though leading to another vision.

_ Is there something else? That wasn’t the last one? _

Then the Mist parts to reveal the exact same alleyway, the exact same setup, and realization hits him like a flash of lightning.

Eric is trapped within his own mind. This is the vision induced by Malzahar, the one imprisoning him. He has been endlessly reliving that night in the alley, an eternal nightmare, dreaming about himself killing Matt over and over and over again.

Normally Dennis would wait for the last memory to end before trying to emerge, in order to avoid being seen by the person whose memories you were in, but this isn't exactly normal—he's here to fix an issue, not just to gather information, so he has to break this cycle. He allows the situation to progress, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing himself for the jolts of pain that he knows will come. As much as it pains him, he has to wait until Eric is alone, so he hears, rather than sees, Matt’s death and Eric’s ensuing breakdown. It’s only when he hears Jensen’s halting footsteps moving away that he opens his eyes and wills himself into existence. 

This entire time Dennis has been nothing more than a shadow, only able to watch events unfold before him. Now, watching his body slowly but surely materialize, he knows it’s time to do what he came to do.

“Dennis?” Eric mutters weakly as he approaches. “What are you doing here?”

He wastes no time, gripping his teammate by the shoulders. “Eric, please wake up. This is already in the past.”

“I did this,” says Eric, voice faint. “This is my fault.” And then, impossibly—he laughs. 

It gives Dennis pause, because Eric almost sounds unhinged. He has to hurry before this gets any worse. “He was going to kill you,” Dennis replies, pulling Eric into his embrace.“Would the real Matt have wanted you dead?”

Eric exhales shakily and doesn’t answer.

“I don’t think he would have. I think… I think he would forgive you for this. For keeping yourself alive.”

“I killed him,” gasps Eric, his body again wracked with sobs. “I killed him. I’m a monster.”

“You’re no monster,” insists Dennis, trying to control his own shaking. If he doesn’t get this right, he might not get another chance. “Being Misted is worse than anything else. He was already at a point of no return, and under someone else’s control.”

“But what happened to his soul?” Eric has quieted some, his words coming out slightly calmer. “I was the one who broke his soul. It’s gone. He’s gone. Isn’t that because of me?”

Dennis closes his eyes. “I’m not going to lie to you. It might be because of you,” he says after a pause. Eric nods, trembling. “But I stand by what I said. It was something you had to do. It was out of your control. Some people have naturally fragile souls that break no matter how carefully you treat them. Maybe he never actually had a soul.”

“I don’t think so,” Licorice says, voice brittle.

“I don’t think so either. But there’s always the possibility.” He pulls back to look directly up into Eric’s eyes. “But Eric, you have to keep trying. You have to wake up. I think—no, I  _ know _ Matt would want you to be okay.”

Eric blinks and tears roll down his cheeks once more. He looks so young and innocent, despite the blood that paints his clothing and weapons. 

“Please,” Dennis says again. “If only for Matt, fight it. Come back to us. We’re here for you.”

“Okay,” Eric finally whispers. “I can do that.”

A few seconds later the Mist around them completely dissipates, bright light blotting out their surroundings. This is good—it means that Eric is fighting back against the scene that Malzahar has set for him, leaving the Malefic Visions behind.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Dennis promises as everything around them flashes bright white. “You’re being so strong.” And then, feeling a sharp, insistent force pulling him back to the present, he closes his eyes and hopes with all his might that he wakes up in the right place.

* * *

“They’re coming back to us,” Reapered exclaims suddenly, and the entire room perks up.

For the past hour, the whole team has been sitting in uneasy silence, watching as Dennis writhed in agony on the floor. At one point he cried out in pain and Nicolaj curled up into a ball at his feet, looking guilty; at another point tears seeped from beneath his closed eyelids and they all had to look away, hoping fervently that things were going okay. Hangyu has been keeping an eye on Sven’s scythe, knowing that it would turn back to normal metal when Umbral Trespass was over.

“Will they wake up now?” Jensen’s voice is shaky.

“I doubt it, they’re probably both exhausted. But at least we know they’re not in any real danger anymore.” Marissa sighs and gets up from her spot on the floor. She’s been a nervous wreck for the past week. “Okay guys, we should move Dennis back to his room and then do something else, get your mind off of them for now, they’re safe. We have to meet with Golden Guardians still, they’re coming tomorrow. Help me clean the house?”

Most of the team follows her out of the room, bringing Dennis out with them. Only Reapered remains in his chair, watching over Eric with a small smile on his face.

“Everything is okay,” he murmurs, pulling Eric’s covers up a bit farther. Yes, Matt is still gone, Mazahar is still out there somewhere, and Eric will still be hurting physically and emotionally when he wakes up, but for the first time that week, Hangyu doesn’t feel like all is lost. Tomorrow he and Minsung will start making plans, and his boys can start contacting other teams for help. 

With the right preparations and the right allies, they can fight back against Malzahar, and they will win. Reapered is sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts:  
> -It's starting to get better, isn't it? :P  
> -Eric's interaction with Matt's body (from chapter 6, but reflected in this chapter as well) was a really delicate bit of writing. Just the thought of that scene made me a little bit sad, even before writing it, so I hope I was able to get that emotion out properly.  
> -Dennis is really just a nice guy, isn't he? Before I even started writing this story I really liked the idea of Dennis utilizing his ultimate to meet someone who was trapped in their own thoughts. I'm glad it actually ended up in the story!
> 
> thanks for reading :D


	9. flawless duet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eric finally wakes up from his living nightmare. The team meets with Golden Guardians, and things are finally, finally looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Flawless Duet (E): Irelia sends out two blades which converge on each other. Enemies caught in between are damaged, stunned and Marked.

Eric tries everything, he really does.

First he stands still and lets Matt’s soul stab him. It hurts, just like he expects, but as Eric falls with a cry of pain, blood spraying from his mouth, he’s smiling, heart a little bit lighter. _I didn’t have to kill him this time,_ he thinks. Then he waits for the dizziness, waits for his death to end this dream—but whatever twisted force is occupying his mind won’t let it happen. No matter how much blood he seems to be losing, his eyes stubbornly remain open and the scene proceeds.

And then, to his horror, he can no longer control his blades. They rise in a circle around him, spinning faster and faster. “No,” he coughs out through a mouthful of blood, because he already knows what’s about to happen, but it doesn’t matter how hard he tries to will his blades back. They don’t belong to him right now, not anymore. “No, please…”

Matt’s Misted soul is standing above him, looking down at him with glowing blue eyes. Eric watches in mounting fear as his mouth opens, and then he speaks, his familiar voice speaking cruel words that reverberate in Eric’s mind.

“You did this.”

The blades fly forward and pierce Matt’s body once again. On the ground, Eric sobs, his tears mixing with the blood that drips down his chin.

 _You’re dreaming,_ he thinks desperately, taking deep, rattling breaths. _He never stabbed you._

He tries again to spare Matt’s life in the next dream, throwing himself at the soul and wresting the knife from his hand while forcing his blades to stay unmoving on the ground. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he promises, stepping back. The Misted version of Matt is standing perfectly still, face emotionless as always, but when Eric speaks those words, the corners of his mouth start to curl up into an impossibly awful sneer.

“Matt?” Eric’s words come out as a squeak. This isn’t a look he’s ever seen his best friend wearing.

 _Still a dream,_ he has to remind himself. _Not real._

“This is your fault,” hisses Matt, and his tone is so dreadful that Eric thinks _this couldn’t possibly be Matt speaking,_ but it is. Of course it is.

Eric’s knives pick themselves up off the ground and zoom forward. Yet again, there is absolutely nothing he can do to stop them. He is helpless, only able to watch in resigned silence as they slice through the Misted soul as though it is nothing but blue paper. When the deed is once again done, he closes his eyes and wishes for it all to be over.

But Eric can’t bring himself to give up. The moment he respawns in his personal hell, he commands his knives to slash through his own body. He’s only a little bit surprised when they obey, sinking one by one into his flesh and leaving him crying out, crumpled against the alley wall and staining the stone crimson.

Just as he has in every single dream cycle, Matt’s Misted form approaches, shining bright blue in the darkness. “Do it,” Eric gasps. “Just let me d—”

The hilt of Matt’s blade is buried in his chest before Eric can say anything else. This time it hurts more than anything he’s ever felt before, white-hot and tingling, but when it ends, Eric starts to laugh, the sound crazed. He’s going insane, he knows it. “My blades can’t hurt you,” he wheezes, ignoring the stabbing pains in his chest with every labored word. “You’re safe from me now.”

Matt does not reply. For a couple of moments they just stare at each other, silent. Then Eric’s knives twist, wrenching themselves free from his body, and his whole world explodes with pain, his vision flashing red. He’s just come back to his senses enough to see somewhat clearly again when he hears his blades, stained with his own blood, go flying through the air with a whistling noise. Not even a moment later he hears Matt cry out, and then his friend’s broken body falls with a dull thud right before him.

Someone is making almost inhuman noises of agony. It takes Eric a minute to realize that it’s himself.

Matt’s eyes are wide open. “You killed me,” he says faintly, his face only a couple of feet from Eric’s own. There is no sign that he had just been Misted—his eyes are brown again and all of the blue smoke is gone from his skin. He looks just like he had when Changseok was still alive.

Stricken with grief and loss, Eric opens his mouth to shout, to weep, to beg, to do _something,_ but his voice dies in his throat and nothing comes out. Matt smiles then, lips stained scarlet, and it’s the same sad smile he wore when he asked to be left for dead in the claws of Kha’Zix. His eyes flutter shut, but his voice lingers. “You’re a monster, Eric Ritchie.”

Eric screams until his lungs give out and he chokes on his own blood.

 

He doesn’t try to change the results of the dream sequence again. Instead he relinquishes control over his own body and allows the dreams to play out again and again exactly as they had in real life.

How many times has he heard his own voice begging for mercy? How many times has he watched his own blades kill Matt? Eric isn’t sure. He lost count a while ago. Now he just sinks into himself and lets it happen, trying to cling to whatever shreds of sanity he has left. It doesn’t really matter. This doesn’t feel like a dream anymore. He’s doomed. He’ll be stuck in this loop of endless misery and useless remorse forever.

Until, miraculously, Dennis materializes near the end of yet another cycle, his comforting presence alien. He tells Eric that this is already in the past and begs Eric to fight back. Eric figures he at least owes his teammates that much. They must be worried about him.

“Please,” Dennis pleads. “If only for Matt, fight it. Come back to us. We’re here for you.”

“Okay,” Eric whispers.

Mustering the last of his strength, he thinks about his team. He has to get back to them somehow, back to the world of the living, however difficult the path might be.

 _This isn’t real,_ he tells himself, even though he’s almost stopped believing it. _Well, this did happen, but you’re just dreaming. Wake up!_

Around him, everything slowly melts away, replaced by shining light. Where blood-stained stone had been, now he only sees a pure, bright white. It’s a little unnerving, but absolutely anything is better than the hell he had just been put through.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” says Dennis’s voice from somewhere in front of him. “You’re being so strong.”

And then, exhausted, Licorice lets himself pass out.

* * *

His eyes open into pitch black and immediately all of the hope drains out of him. It didn’t work. He’s still stuck in his own worst nightmare, waiting for the cycle to begin again. Why did he even hope for anything different?

“Eric?” says a quiet voice, and he almost gasps out loud. “Eric, it’s me.”

The light in his room turns on. Tristan is standing to one side, smiling slightly, dark circles visible under his eyes. Strewn about the room are the rest of their friends, fast asleep, lying on blankets spread over the floor. As Eric and Tristan watch fondly, Keith snores, rolls over, and wraps his arms around the closest thing to him (which happens to be the much smaller body of Colin).

“What are you guys doing here?” Eric makes a motion to get up, but before he can even get his legs over the side of the bed he’s hit by a wave of dizziness and instead sinks back down, groaning. Only then does he notice how much his entire body aches and how much he’s shivering.

“Your teammate Dennis came to get us,” replies Tristan, moving over to the edge of Eric’s bed and helping him sit up. “He thought you’d appreciate our presence. Then he thought we might be champions of some sort too and said he’d keep in touch after today.”

“Dennis? Sven?” questions Licorice with a chuckle. “You’re already on a first-name basis with him?”

“Yeah, mostly because he and Greyson really hit it off. It was surprising to us, since everyone knows champions are so protective of their real names, but… anyway, Dennis showed up at our door yesterday afternoon and explained everything that he could. He said he had just woken up from bringing you back earlier in the morning.”

“Told you… everything?” Eric swallows hard, unbidden tears springing to his eyes. “So he told you that—that I—”

“He did,” whispers Tristan with a little shake of his head. For a moment he and Eric just look at each other, tears welling in both of their eyes, before Tristan cracks and leans down to give Eric a hug. “It… it was closure. You found Matt. There was nothing else you could do.” His voice is shaky. Eric wonders distantly if Tristan even believes his own words.

In the corner Greyson’s blonde head pops up, and a moment later he calls out, “Eric, you’re okay!” That rouses the rest of the room, and soon enough there are four guys standing around his bed.

They’re all shaken by everything that’s happened, from the death of Ray to the loss of Matt—even though they do their best to hide it, he can see it in their eyes. Colin is quiet as usual, his already small frame somehow seeming even more slight, dark eyes zoning out more often. Keith smiles like nothing is wrong, but his eyes are dull. Greyson is even friendlier, even louder, but when he isn’t laughing or speaking his face takes on a sort of haunted look. And Tristan just looks like he’s about to shatter into a million pieces. Despite this, they’re all clearly making an effort to be there for Eric, which he greatly appreciates.

He spends most of the night with them, talking about everything: after skirting around the topic a little, they come to an unspoken agreement to talk freely and fondly of Matt and Raymond, as long as they’re only bringing up good memories of their departed friends. Eventually their voices taper off as they give in to their exhaustion and fall asleep one after the other, the walls of Eric’s room dappled with the light of dawn.

They leave later that morning, headed back to their own home. Eric is still too weak to get up and see them off, so they all say their farewells in his room, promising to meet up more often in the future.

He doesn’t really know how to face the rest of his team yet, so he’s relieved when only Marissa comes to see him, bringing him food and water and letting him talk through whatever he wants. “The team is preparing to go on patrol,” she tells him when he hesitantly asks about them. “Just Jensen and Sven, though. Sneaky and Smoothie are going to stay so that they can meet with Lourlo and Contractz’s team. They’re bringing their new member with them, and we’re going to try to get them on board for our fight against Malzahar, so there’s some pretty great stuff from both sides. We’re getting ready.”

“The advisors?”

“Reapered and Rapidstar went to Rapidstar’s old house to look through his books and figure out a plan of action. They’ll be back really late tonight.” She guides him back into bed when his eyelids start to droop. “Sleep, Eric. We’ll wake you up after the meeting. I don’t think anything interesting will happen just yet.” He doesn’t protest.

* * *

Smoothie has been waiting for a while, so when the knock on the door finally comes, he pulls it open immediately and is puzzled when he finds only Samson standing there, shivering a little in the cold night air.

“The rest of my team will be a little late,” says Lourlo sheepishly. “They figure Deftly and I can tell you our interesting info up until they get here, they’re still working back at the house…”

“Totally fine, it’s great that you guys are getting business! Jensen and Sven are out of the house now too, they’re on the way back from patrol. Really glad you guys could make it at all, we have a lot to catch up on.” Smoothie frowns. “But uh… who is Deftly?”

“Oh yeah! Sorry, this is Deftly.” Lourlo pulls a black-haired, wide-eyed man out from behind him and ungracefully shoves him through the open door. There’s a tool belt strapped to his waist. “He’s the newest addition to our team! And he’s kind of amazing at making things. A Revered Inventor, in fact.” Samson waves a hand towards Andy while pulling the door shut with his other hand. “Deftly, this is Smoothie, a Chain Warden.”

Deftly grins and adjusts his glasses. “Nice to meet you,” he says, shaking Smoothie’s hand.

They sit down on the couches in the living room and idly discuss the state of other teams in the area while drinking tea, periodically interrupted by other members of Cloud9 (minus Licorice) entering the room and restarting the necessary introductions. At some point the conversation switches to Deftly himself when Sneaky gets curious about his origins.

“They saved me from a Void monster about a month and a half ago,” Deftly answers with a shrug. For the first time, his smile drops off his face, replaced by a somber, almost distant look. “I was dead for sure.”

“I think this was actually the night Matt went to help you out, it happened an hour or two before you called us for help. Deftly was unconscious when we got to him,” Samson picks up from here, glancing at his teammate with a hint of worry. “Mostly from Black Mist though. The creature had isolated him, seized him, and then leaped away over the rooftops, invisible.”

“Which creature?”

“Kha’Zix,” says Deftly quietly.

“Kha’Zix…” mutters Andy. _What a coincidence…_ “Sorry. Go on.”

“We saw what looked like a corpse fly by our living room window,” Sam continues. “Hovering, moving fast. Something invisible had to be carrying it somehow. It stopped on the rooftop next to ours, on the same side of the street. Matt yelled something and ran to the window, pulled it open. I think he said ‘that body still has life’ or something. Juan immediately stepped into the shadows, reappeared in the darkness by Kha’Zix, and pulled Deftly away from it before he started fighting.”

“And Deftly, you were still unconscious then?” Marissa asks.

“Yeah.” Deftly still looks and sounds strangely detached. Andy narrows his eyes. “Matt focused some sort of healing power on me as they fought on the rooftop. Or that’s what he says at least, I wouldn’t know. Kha’Zix fled when they all came running to take me inside because it was completely outnumbered. I woke up in one of their spare rooms with a bunch of bandages plastered all over.”

“We figured he had to be some sort of potential champion after seeing what had happened to him that night. Scrapes, gashes, extended exposure to Black Mist…” Lourlo laughs. “Getting him to recover wasn’t too hard with Matt around, just a couple of days, and then we just brought him to the weapon chest in the basement. So yeah.”

“Hold on.” Andy cuts in now because while this whole process feels eerily similar to their assimilation of Eric, that isn’t even his first concern. Something is definitely up. “This sounds kinda like what happened with our new guy Licorice, but I’ll save that for later. Deftly, what else happened when they found you? You look kind of… upset? Something else must have happened.”

Dead silence for a couple moments. Their visitors exchange knowing looks. Then Deftly speaks up. “When Kha’Zix initially attacked me, before it actually dragged me over the rooftops… I wasn’t alone. I was with my best friend. We were attempting to move because the friend we had been staying with had disappeared and the only safe place we could think of was across town. So we moved with all our belongings. One backpack each.”

Zach grips at Andy’s arm tightly; when Andy spares him a glance, he finds that his Oathsworn is wearing a look of shock and realization.

“Out of literally nowhere this gigantic bug-like monster just appeared. A disgusting thing with these huge claws, insect wings, and sharp teeth. We tried to run,” continues Deftly. “Of course that didn’t do much. I mean, I was still completely human back then, and incapacitated by Black Mist. He was fine for some reason, but I was slowly dying to it. I kept telling him to run and just leave me, but he said—”

He stops and takes a deep, shuddering breath, words seemingly failing. Sam sighs and pats him encouragingly on the back. Marissa is urgently whispering in Zach’s ear, eyes wide.

_It can’t possibly be…_

“He said he wasn’t leaving without me. He said… dead or alive, we would go together. God, what an idiot.” Deftly chuckles a little, but his eyes are filled with tears. “Of course Kha’Zix popped up and grabbed me, I was defenseless. There was nothing he could do.”

“But he still tried. God, he tried _so hard_ to stop it from dragging me away. He ran forward and—and Kha’Zix hurled spikes at him, spikes that were as big and sharp as knives. I saw… I saw one of them hit him in the chest.”

Somewhere deep within, Andy knows exactly where this is going, but he refuses to believe it. No way. He can’t believe it. There’s simply no way. _No way._

And yet…

“After that Kha’Zix leaped onto a rooftop with me in its claws and I lost sight of him, and then that’s all I remember.” Deftly closes his eyes. He’s shaking from the ordeal of retelling his story, his trauma. Andy wonders if he himself is shaking just from listening to it. “There’s no way he could have survived, not with the Mist and no one around to help. But if I could have just—just said goodbye or something—if I could have—”

“Deftly,” interrupts Sneaky, sounding about as unaffected as always. (Smoothie silently thanks him for being so stoic, because there’s no way he could string coherent thoughts together to form words right now.) “Deftly, was—is your friend’s name Eric? Eric Ritchie?”

“…What?” Deftly’s eyes snap open. “How did you know?”

Marissa makes an audible sound, a half-gasp, half-groan, and runs for the stairs. Sam drops his (empty) glass onto the rug. “No way,” says Andy under his breath. “There’s no way…”

While everyone is still reeling from the sheer impossibility of this latest discovery, Sneaky somehow finds within himself the ability to stand and wordlessly direct their visitors up the stairs after Marissa. Smoothie takes a few seconds to compose himself before he follows on shaky legs.

“How?” he mutters quietly to Zach. “Matthew Chen is dead.”

“I guess not?” Zach shakes his head. “But yeah, when Eric came back… when he came back from patrol that night there was literally blood all over him. And Jensen said he watched it happen…”

“Malzahar was behind that too, maybe? Uh… we’ll have to worry about it later,” Andy says, because now they’re at Eric’s door.

Deftly is clutching Lourlo’s arm tightly, still shaking, expression stiff. Marissa knocks on the door. “Eric?” she calls. “You awake?”

Silence, just for a moment. And then—

 

“Yeah, hey,” Eric calls, rubbing his eyes. The room is a bit too dark, so he lazily directs one of his blades to flip the light switch. “Just woke up. Do you need something?”

There’s a pause so long that he wonders if Marissa has left. “You have… visitors,” she finally replies. “I’m opening the door.” Eric barely has time to say “okay” before the door swings open and someone is practically pushed over the threshold.

He is clearly better-fed now, unlike before, when months of hunger had lent sharp edges to his face and body, leaving him looking gaunt. His hair is a bit longer and styled more neatly, although those thick-rimmed glasses are the exact same. Eric takes in the shock on the man’s familiar face and the look of fragility—as though he’s about to dissolve into tears or collapse onto the floor, perhaps both.

“Oh my god,” mutters his best friend, approaching the bed on shaky legs. “Eric?”

“Matt?” he whispers, pushing aside his covers and struggling to stand. Disbelief is drowning out any thought other than _this is a prank this is a prank the universe is pulling such an awful prank._ “I… But I…”

“Oh my god,” repeats Matt, pulling Eric into a hug. He is the same height as Eric remembers him and reassuringly solid, so Eric is _not_ being pranked by the universe. “I thought you were dead.”

“Me too,” Eric manages numbly as his blades rise around them in a joyous little circle. (For once they are far more controlled than he is.) There are tears swimming in his eyes and trickling down his cheeks. Matt has buried his face in Eric’s shirt and is definitely crying too, so he figures it’s alright. Someone sniffles wetly from outside the open door.

The intricate tool belt Matt is wearing, the undead version of him that Eric had torn to pieces while cursing himself and wishing he was being ripped apart instead—those are the little details that they can and will worry about later. For now, all that matters is that they are both alive and well, and that they have found each other once again.

So many nights of helpless tears, of endless pain, of fruitless hope—and in the end, it has come down to this. Matt and Eric. Just like old times.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some thoughts:  
> \- I wrote the first part (Eric trying not to kill Matt in his dreams) yesterday and it was a real oof... but the rest of the chapter is just a giant billboard from me reading "I TOLD YOU IT WOULD GET BETTER" !!!  
> \- The Eric/Matt reunion scene was something I've been sitting on for a while! I wrote it before I even decided Malzahar existed in this AU. It's a bit anticlimactic because we readers know Deftly's real name, but it was still a treat to write.  
> \- We'll hopefully be seeing even more of spring split C9A (Shiro, Goldenglue, Keith, Zeyzal)! Along with a certain other insane fish...  
> \- This is the last of my pre-written material, so updates will probably slow down significantly from here.
> 
> I finished putting this chapter together at 4 in the morning, so if you catch inconsistencies or typos, please tell me~! And as always, comments are much appreciated, it would make my day <3 thank you!


	10. final chapter + author's note

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> after recent roster moves (namely Jensen to TL), I really can't bring myself to keep writing this story. I'm more bitter than I thought I would be, even after giving myself some more time to think, and so I'll be stopping death's dance here.  
> below is what I've worked on of the next chapter... sorry to be cutting this fic short.

Dennis comes home from patrol with two souls collected in his scythe. When he and Nicolaj step into the kitchen and see Matt alive and well, sitting next to Eric and feeding him soup, Dennis swears his own soul almost leaves his body.

“What the fuck?” shrieks Jensen from where he stands in the doorway ahead of Dennis. Matt and Eric’s heads turn towards them, the latter sporting a sheepish look. 

All Dennis can feel is overwhelming relief. He pushes past the seemingly frozen Jensen, his smile already growing at the sight of these two both safe and sound. “You’re okay,” he manages to say, reaching out to Eric for a hug. “You’re okay. Thank god.” The other man is still weak—he struggles to stand on his own, clinging to Dennis a little, and he almost looks as skinny as he did when the team had first found him underfed and bleeding out—but the smile on his face is more beautiful and vibrant than ever.

“Thank you,” whispers Eric. “I know what you did for me.”

“I’m sorry that I did that. Without permission or anything.”

“No, you did it for all the right reasons… I’m sorry it had to come to that.”

“And you!” Sven exclaims, releasing Eric from his hold (although the other man still uses Sven to keep his balance) and waving his hands at Matt, who blinks at him uncomprehendingly. “I watched you die. Twice! How the hell are you alive?”

“Don’t freak him out just yet, Dennis,” Andy laughs, walking into the kitchen, as Matt’s eyes widen. Contractz and Marissa are right behind him. “We haven’t really gone over the entire situation yet.”

“We can do that pretty soon, right?” Matt, waving them off, helps a bashful Eric sit back down and holds another spoonful of soup to his lips. “Just… give me a minute here.” 

None of them can properly suppress the smiles on their faces at the sight. “Yeah, just join us when you’re done,” Smoothie replies, turning back towards the living room. Svenskeren, Jensen, and Contractz follow, exchanging relieved glances. 

Sneaky and Lourlo are already there. “To think that this all could have been avoided if I just asked you for Licorice’s name,” grumbles Contractz as he sits down on the couch. Smoothie snorts.

“To be fair, he  _ did _ think Eric was dead,” Lourlo says with a shrug. He lowers his voice. “He had nightmares for days. Even before he woke up for the first time… he muttered Eric’s name in his sleep.”

“Yeah, the first time he told us his story he cried… a lot,” Contractz adds. 

Sneaky nods. “Same thing with Eric. But he at least thought Matt could be alive.”

“Speaking of which…” Sven leans forward. He’s just remembered something. “We need to tell their friends about this, don’t we?”

“You just want to talk to that guy Greyson,” jokes Smoothie, and everyone laughs. 

“You’re not wrong,” Sven replies, chuckling as he grabs his scythe. “But I think they deserve to hear this. We already know they’re potential champions of some sort and I feel like Matt would want to see Tristan too.”

“I’ll come with you, teleporting is always quicker than walking four people the whole way.” Jensen stands up. “Although I’ll need to borrow some energy from you if I want to get all four of them back at once.”

“I can contribute too,” says Contractz, picking up his own scythe from the table and following them out the door.

* * *

 

Tristan has spent the entire evening sitting alone, dull eyes fixed upon a single spot on the wall. The only sign that he hasn’t turned to stone is the occasional tap of his fingers at the surface of the table upon which they rest. He’s been relatively quiet since they returned from seeing Eric, but how he looks right now is a whole new low, so Greyson is even more worried than usual.

“You can be mad at Eric, bro,” Yuri says hesitantly, sitting opposite Tristan. “You have the right to be upset. You don’t have to be okay with him.”

There is silence for a while. Greyson tentatively approaches and takes a seat next to Keith, waiting for Tristan’s answer.

“I should be there for him,” he finally whispers. “The state he was in… and he has to live with it. Not me. I don’t have the right to be—to be—”

“If you need to keep your distance, do it,” Greyson insists. “You’re not entirely wrong with what you just said, but give it some time. You have to let yourself process it too.”

“It’s stupid,” mumbles Tristan, lip quivering, as Yuri leans across the table to pluck his glasses from his face and hand him a tissue. “Eric told me what happened that night. There should have been no chance Matt was alive anyways. So why did I hold onto it for so long?”

“Because that’s just what people do,” comes a soft voice, and Colin walks into the room. He sits down at Tristan’s side and lays a small hand over his, a reassuring gesture. “Of course we’re going to hold onto the smallest of hopes. You know, I tried to tell Ray things for a whole week after he was gone? I called out to ask him questions. Even when there was no one there to answer.” It seems like the usually soft-spoken Colin for once has more to say, but before he can continue, there’s a series of frantic knocks at their door. 

“Gotta be one of the Shadow Walkers,” mutters Keith. “No one else knows who we are. But this late at night?”

Shooting his friends a bewildered glance, Greyson gets up and heads for the doorway, the knocking quickly turning into someone seemingly pounding on the door. “Dennis, we get it, you can break this down if you want to,” he shouts, a smile beginning to form on his face.

“Come on, Greyson, this is important,” a familiar accented voice yells, and he grins despite himself.

“Okay,” he calls back. “Only for you!”

The moment the door opens, three people dart inside. Svenskeren is there, scythe in hand, smiling a little too brightly for how late it is. Jensen, standing at his side, looks downright happy, which is a rare sight—Greyson is always a little intimidated by him. And right behind them is a boy holding a dark scythe of his own, smiling pleasantly, if not a little awkwardly.

“Uh… I definitely didn’t know there would be three of you—”

“Where’s Tristan?” Jensen cuts in, spinning a shuriken between his fingers. 

“Here,” comes Tristan’s tired voice, and a few seconds later he approaches them, glasses in one hand. “Hi, Dennis. Hi, Jensen. What’s happening at such a late hour?”

“Matt is alive,” Dennis blurts, and Tristan drops his glasses on the doormat. (Greyson briefly contemplates punching a wall to see if he’s dreaming, but quickly decides against it.) “We can explain. Come with us. And hurry.”

* * *

 

Sven, Contractz, and Jensen return to the living room of Cloud9’s team house, this time with four more people following them inside. Deftly leans back into the couch, putting a protective arm around Licorice’s bony shoulders, and watches curiously as their visitors file in. For whatever reason, all of them are looking at him apprehensively. 

He doesn’t get why until he sees the last person’s face, and then he’s on his feet before he can think about it, throwing himself into his friend’s waiting arms. “Matt,” croaks Tristan into his ear. “They said you were—I thought you were dead.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot tonight,” confesses Matt, and Tristan responds with a shaky laugh.

Smoothie and Sneaky carry in some chairs from the kitchen. Soon enough they’re all seated in the living room, waiting for someone to start telling the whole story.

“I’ll start,” Jensen offers, looking around. “Deftly, er, Matt… you do know how Shadow Walkers work, right? You know what we do?”

“Uh, mostly,” answers Matt with a nod. “I know you collect souls from the dead and dying and then send them to the Shadow Isles. And that you fight against the Void.”

“Precisely.” Jensen claps his hands. “So Eric and I, we went on patrol to do just that. Collect souls from humans, send them to the Shadow Isles. Nothing else. The night was going pretty well. Except when we passed the alleyway in which Kha’Zix first attacked you two”—he gestures towards Eric and Matt—“there was someone standing there with a knife.”

Deftly already has an idea of where this is going, but that doesn’t prepare him for what Eric has to say.

“And it was you, Matt,” Eric rasps, averting his eyes. “But it wasn’t you. You were… a shadow. It was an undead version of you, it looked like you, but there was nothing else. I couldn’t take your soul, but then you tried to stab me, and you—you would have. I couldn’t let it happen. I tried to stop you but you wouldn’t listen, it was like you couldn’t hear me, and—”

The room is completely silent.

“So I killed that version of you,” Eric finally whispers. “And then I tried to take your soul.”

“But there wasn’t one,” Matt realizes. He tightens the arm he has around Eric’s shoulder, trying to get his friend to meet his eyes.

“No, there wasn’t. And I blamed myself.” To Matt’s horror, Eric is trembling. “I started to have nightmares. Like the ones I’d been having when you first disappeared, but worse. And not just about me killing you, but then me killing others, too. The rest of my team. Tristan’s and my friends.”

“This is where Malzahar comes in, we think,” Jensen pipes up. “Something stopped me from intervening when we found your soul in that alley. And then Eric was infected with Malefic Visions, while I quickly recovered from it.”

“I was beginning to lose sight of what was reality and what was a dream,” Eric continues. “At some point I started to relive the night I killed you over and over again.”

“He was asleep,” interjects Dennis. “Couldn’t wake him up. I had to use Umbral Trespass to go in and drag him out of the Malefic Visions. Out of his own mind.” Matt raises an eyebrow—that’s Juan’s ultimate ability, the one he has mentioned never wanting to use unless in cases of emergency. “In the process I saw a few things from your past, but tried to keep it as limited as possible. Sorry about that.”

Still at a loss for words, Matt shakes his head in reassurance.

“Before Dennis came… I tried to change what happened. What was happening. In my nightmares.” The words burst from Eric’s lips all at once, practically tumbling into each other, and Matt can tell by the other Cloud9 members’ reactions that they hadn’t even heard about this. “Because I could barely tell what was real anymore. I tried to let you stab me with the knife, I tried to stop my blades from shredding through you, I even—I even sliced my own knives through myself trying to keep them from hurting you. I felt every inch of every blade. But it didn’t matter how much pain I put myself through or how much I bled. It just didn’t matter. I couldn’t be the one to die. And the last time I tried it, you—your soul said I was a monster.” 

The shock and dismay on everyone’s faces is evident now. Tristan meets Matt’s eyes from across the room and they share a look of horror. Eric went through all of this? Even though both of them were alive and mourning the other the whole time?

“So I was going crazy,” Eric croaks. “I stopped trying to change anything and just had to watch myself killing you over and over. Until Dennis came and got me out.”

Matt exhales sharply and pulls his best friend into a hug. “I’m sorry,” is all he can get out, words muffled against Eric’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

“It isn’t your fault,” Eric mutters, as Matt clings to him insistently. He can’t tell if his friend is telling the truth or not. He’s shaking. Both of them are, even as Tristan joins the huddle. “And besides, you’re here now. That’s what matters.”

(After hearing that, Deftly refuses to leave and subsequently spends the night in a sleeping bag rolled out on Licorice’s floor. It takes Eric a long time to fall asleep, despite how tired he is, because every time he closes his eyes for too long he doubts that Matt is still there, so he takes a quick look towards the floor to check. But no one needs to know that.)

* * *

 

The next morning sees the entirety of Golden Guardians sitting in Cloud9’s living room, save the Starchild Matt, who is apparently working on a huge batch of potions for another Shadow Walker team. Reapered grandly unfurls a large sheet of paper, which he tapes to the wall before uncapping a marker and turning to them all. “What Malzahar does? We make list.”

_ “He can completely suppress people,” _ offers Rapidstar. Reapered starts to write it down before realizing that no one else on the team can understand what he’s writing, so he hands off the marker to Smoothie with an annoyed sigh.

“Right,” Andy says, looking amused. “So he can infect people’s minds. And he can suppress people invisibly. What else?”

“There’s reason to believe that he has some degree of control over the Void monsters as well,” Nicolaj says. 

“Oh yes, that.” Andy writes it down. “He did open the Void. Uh, do we just assume that he’s got some champion teams in his back pocket?”

“Team Liquid for sure,” Samson replies, face darkening a little. “I don’t think that’s a rumor. How else would Malzahar have a clone of Deftly?”

“A clone…” murmurs Eric. “So that’s what it was? That’s why there was no soul…”

“Who else makes clones besides Pobelter, the Deceiver?” continues Sam. “Personally I can’t think of anyone.”

“That’s right!” Juan suddenly gasps, sitting up straighter and wringing his hands. “Ah, I was going to tell you about that, it’s one of the reasons I set that meeting up in the first place, argh… just kinda got distracted by this whole thing about Matt’s Eric being alive the whole time. Impact! Impact came to talk to me the other day, when he was buying potions.”

The entire room seems to stiffen at the name of their former teammate. “And what did he say?” asks Zach tentatively.

“He said that Pobelter—he said, ‘Eugene got a big job last week.’ He said it paid well. And then he confirmed that they’re working with Malzahar. He didn’t really want me to tell anyone else, but…”

“We go see them,” Reapered interjects. The scowl on his face is utterly terrifying, especially taking into account the gigantic blade floating behind him. “Team Liquid. Right away!”

“Of course,” agrees Andy grimly. “Why don’t we put together a list of teams to visit?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...and that's all for death's dance! thanks for coming on this journey with me. I had a lot of fun writing this (I believe it's produced some of my best descriptions of grief/loss that I've ever written) and I hope you had just as much fun reading it :D
> 
> I'll write other pieces whenever inspiration strikes, so I hope you'll keep an eye out for my works in the future! thank you again!
> 
> -sab


End file.
